AgingResearch.NewsJoin free
Acta Neuropathologica

Human brain vessels show distinct states in small vessel disease

Researchers identified three vessel states across disease severity by analysing 11,409 vessel fragments from post-mortem brain tissue from 20 cases.

Paper by A Chagnot, D Jaime Garcia, C McQuaid, Show 5 more authorsA Montagne
Figure 1 from Acta Neuropathologica
Open the figure at full size
Figure 1. Chagnot et al.
Cross-sectional study of 20 peopleMechanisms
Paper
Follow

In post-mortem human brain tissue from 20 cases, researchers conducted a cross-sectional observational study of 11,409 small-vessel fragments across disease severity and age. They studied cerebral small vessel disease, a leading cause of stroke and blood-vessel-related thinking problems. They measured protein signals from pericytes, cells that support small blood vessels, and endothelial cells, which line them.

Lower pericyte protein signals were associated with greater disease severity and age, consistent with reduced coverage of vessels by these cells. Signals of activation in vessel-lining cells increased with disease severity. Grouping vessels by their protein signals revealed three states: preserved pericyte signals with low activation, reduced pericyte signals without activation, and reduced pericyte signals with activation.

Why it matters

The brain’s small vessels help form a barrier that controls what enters from the blood. The study offers a framework for investigating how disruption of this barrier relates to aging and small vessel disease.

Caveats

This cross-sectional study could not establish which changes came first or how they were connected. It measured protein signals in post-mortem tissue from 20 cases; reduced pericyte signals did not by themselves establish cell loss.

From the paper

Events by group

Iba1-positive area and the number of segmented particles were respectively 24% and 46% lower in grey matter from severe compared with mild cSVD cases (p = 0.022 and p = 0.010; Supplementary Fig. 2c, d), with no significant differences detected between the other groups.

Results, Microglial morphology is altered in severe cSVD

Quoted word for word from the full text on link.springer.com.

More on Cerebral small vessel disease