title: White matter hyperintensities in mild lewy body dementia.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  The objective of this study was to explore the load of white matter hyperintensities (WMH) in patients with Lewy body dementia (LBD) and compare to Alzheimer's disease (AD) and normal controls (NC).
  
  
  METHODS
  Diagnosis of LBD and AD was made according to consensus criteria and cognitive tests were administered. MRI scans for 77 (61 AD and 16 LBD) patients and 37 healthy elderly control subjects were available for analysis. We segmented WMH from FLAIR images using an automatic thresholding technique and calculated the volume of WMH in several regions of the brain, using non-parametric tests to compare groups. Multivariate regression was applied.
  
  
  RESULTS
  There were no significant differences in WMH between AD and LBD. We found a significant correlation between total and frontal WMH and Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE) and verbal fluency scores in the AD group, but not in the LBD group.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  The WMH load in LBD was similar to that of AD. A correlation between WMH load and cognition was found in the AD group, but not in the LBD group, suggesting that vascular disease contributes to cognitive impairment in AD but not LBD.
authors.affiliation: Centre for Age-Related Medicine, Stavanger University Hospital, Stavanger, Norway ; Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, University of Stavanger, Stavanger, Norway.
authors.forename: K
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Oppedal
authors.forename: D
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Aarsland
authors.forename: M J
authors.initials: MJ
authors.lastname: Firbank
authors.forename: H
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Sonnesyn
authors.forename: O B
authors.initials: OB
authors.lastname: Tysnes
authors.forename: J T
authors.initials: JT
authors.lastname: O'Brien
authors.forename: M K
authors.initials: MK
authors.lastname: Beyer