White matter lesions on magnetic resonance imaging in a healthy elderly population: Correlations to vascular risk factors and carotid atherosclerosis.
We performed magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and extensive risk factor evaluation on 196 randomly selected, clinically asymptomatic participants of the Austrian Stroke Prevention Study to determine the clinical correlates of MRI white matter lesions (WML) in normals. WML were present in 103 (52.6%) individuals. There were 69 (35.2%) subjects with Grade 1 (punctate), 26 (13.3%) with Grade 2 (beginning confluent), and 8 (4.1%) with Grade 3 (confluent) WML Multivariate stepwise forward regression analysis created a model of independent predictors of the WML score including arterial hypertension (p = 0.001) and age (p = 0.04). Only 24.7% of WML score variance could be explained by the two variables, however. No other demographic or clinical factors, such as cardiac disease, diabetes mellitus, smoking, lipid status, serum fibrinogen, hematocrit, antiphospholipid antibody titer, or ultrasound results of the carotid arteries entered the model. These data imply the presence of yet undetermined factors in the pathogenesis of WML, probably independent of those known to be associated with atherothrombotic brain infarction.
From the Department of Neurology, Karl Franzens University Graz, Graz, Austria.
H
H
Lechner
R
R
Schmidt
F
F
Fazekas
M
M
Koch
H
H
Offenbacher
B
B
Reinhart
P
P
Grieshofer