Advances in vascular cognitive impairment

Abstract

This lecture will explore the increasingly prominent role of cerebrovascular disease in dementia pathology. The traditional distinction between vascular dementia and Alzheimer’s disease (AD) will no longer be sustainable. A paradigm shift is expected to clarify the clinico-pathological definition of vascular cognitive impairment, and its cross-relationship with AD and other dementias, with the wider adoption of neuroimaging techniques to visualise amyloid and tau pathology. Cerebrovascular disease appears to provide an attractive avenue for dementia prevention, starting from middle age or earlier, long before cognitive impairment is clinically detectable. The research evidence base for this assumption will be examined in my lecture.