cerebral small vessel disease can be the cause of NAWM
Posted: Tue Jun 07, 2011 2:14 pm
NAWM (normal appearing white matter) is the name for abnormal white matter areas that look normal in MRI, but under special MRIs are abnormal. They are important because MS lesions appear inside these NAWM areas, and therefore they represent an early problem before developing the lesions.
As anybody here would have bet, they are connected with blood flow, more exactly, with cerebral small vessel disease (SVD) :
Diffusion tensor imaging and cognition in cerebral small vessel disease
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21549191
CONCLUSION: DTI parameters in both WML and NAWM correlate with cognitive performance, independent of SVD. DTI may be a promising tool in exploring the mechanisms of cognitive decline and could function as a surrogate marker for disease progression in therapeutic trials. This article is part of a Special Issue entitled: Imaging Brain Aging and Neurodegenerative disease.
Edit: There is also a relationship to the condition known as "Leukoaraiosis"
http://www.thisisms.com/forum/chronic-c ... 22309.html
As anybody here would have bet, they are connected with blood flow, more exactly, with cerebral small vessel disease (SVD) :
Diffusion tensor imaging and cognition in cerebral small vessel disease
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21549191
CONCLUSION: DTI parameters in both WML and NAWM correlate with cognitive performance, independent of SVD. DTI may be a promising tool in exploring the mechanisms of cognitive decline and could function as a surrogate marker for disease progression in therapeutic trials. This article is part of a Special Issue entitled: Imaging Brain Aging and Neurodegenerative disease.
Edit: There is also a relationship to the condition known as "Leukoaraiosis"
http://www.thisisms.com/forum/chronic-c ... 22309.html