Biomarkers identify the Binswanger type of vascular cognitive impairment.

A new interesting article has been published in J Cereb Blood Flow Metab. 2019 Aug;39(8):1602-1612. doi: 10.1177/0271678X18762655. Epub 2018 Mar 7. and titled:

Biomarkers identify the Binswanger type of vascular cognitive impairment.

Authors of this article are:

Barry Erhardt E, Pesko JC, Prestopnik J, Thompson J, Caprihan A, Rosenberg GA.

A summary of the article is shown below:

Binswanger’s disease is a form of subcortical ischemic vascular disease (SIVD-BD) with extensive white matter changes. To test the hypothesis that biomarkers could improve classification of SIVD-BD, we recruited 62 vascular cognitive impairment and dementia (VCID) patients. Multimodal biomarkers were collected at entry into the study based on clinical and neuropsychological testing, multimodal magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), and cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) analysis. The patients’ diagnoses were confirmed by long-term follow-up, and they formed a “training set” to test classification methods, including (1) subcortical ischemic vascular disease score (SIVDS), (2) exploratory factor analysis (EFA), (3) logistic regression (LR), and (4) random forest (RF). A subsequently recruited cohort of 43 VCID patients with provisional diagnoses were used as a “test” set to calculate the probability of SIVD-BD based on biomarkers obtained at entry. We found that N-acetylaspartate (NAA) on proton magnetic resonance spectroscopy (1H-MRS) was the best variable for classification, followed by matrix metalloproteinase-2 in CSF and blood-brain barrier permeability on MRI. Both LR and RF performed better in diagnosing SIVD-BD than either EFA or SIVDS. Two-year follow-up of provisional diagnosis patients confirmed the accuracy of statistically derived classifications. We propose that biomarker-based classification methods could diagnose SIVD-BD patients earlier, facilitating clinical trials.

Check out the article’s website on Pubmed for more information:



This article is a good source of information and a good way to become familiar with topics such as: Binswanger’s disease;biomarkers;random forests;vascular cognitive impairment and dementia;white matter hyperintensities.

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