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Review
. 2021 May 7;22(9):4958.
doi: 10.3390/ijms22094958.

The Contribution of Small Vessel Disease to Neurodegeneration: Focus on Alzheimer's Disease, Parkinson's Disease and Multiple Sclerosis

Federico Paolini Paoletti  1 , Simone Simoni  1 , Lucilla Parnetti  1 , Lorenzo Gaetani  1
Affiliations
Review

The Contribution of Small Vessel Disease to Neurodegeneration: Focus on Alzheimer's Disease, Parkinson's Disease and Multiple Sclerosis

Federico Paolini Paoletti et al. Int J Mol Sci. .

Abstract

Brain small vessel disease (SVD) refers to a variety of structural and functional changes affecting small arteries and micro vessels, and manifesting as white matter changes, microbleeds and lacunar infarcts. Growing evidence indicates that SVD might play a significant role in the neurobiology of central nervous system (CNS) neurodegenerative disorders, namely Alzheimer's disease (AD) and Parkinson's disease (PD), and neuroinflammatory diseases, such as multiple sclerosis (MS). These disorders share different pathophysiological pathways and molecular mechanisms (i.e., protein misfolding, derangement of cellular clearance systems, mitochondrial impairment and immune system activation) having neurodegeneration as biological outcome. In these diseases, the actual contribution of SVD to the clinical picture, and its impact on response to pharmacological treatments, is not known yet. Due to the high frequency of SVD in adult-aged patients, it is important to address this issue. In this review, we report preclinical and clinical data on the impact of SVD in AD, PD and MS, with the main aim of clarifying the predictability of SVD on clinical manifestations and treatment response.

Keywords: Alzheimer’s disease; Parkinson’s disease; multiple sclerosis; neurodegeneration; neuroinflammation; small vessel disease.

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Conflict of interest statement

All authors declare no conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
The figure shows the main pathophysiological mechanisms that link neurodegeneration/neuroinflammation and small vessel disease.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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