Affiliations: [a] Department of Clinical Sciences Lund, Division of Oncology and Pathology, Lund University, Sweden
| [b] Department of Clinical Sciences Lund, Division of Clinical Sciences Helsingborg, Lund University, Sweden
Correspondence:
[*]
Correspondence to: Keivan Javanshiri, Department of Clinical Sciences Lund, Medical Student at Lund University (Graduation January 2019), Division of Oncology and Pathology, Lund University, Klinisk Genetik och Patologi, Solvegatan 25B, 223 62, Lund, Sweden. Tel.: +0046737 882498; E-mail: Psy12kja@student.lu.se.
Abstract: Background:Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is the most prevalent cause of dementia with vascular dementia (VaD) being second alongside with mixed AD and VaD, according to some. For some time, it has been proposed that cardiovascular disease (CaVD), hypertension, and diabetes mellitus (DM), which are known risk factors for VaD, also are associated with and contribute to the development of AD. Objective:The aim of this study was to investigate the prevalence of these proposed general risk factors, and to document presence of CaVD as evidenced from clinical records or from autopsy findings, further to correlate these with the diagnoses AD, VaD and mixed AD-VaD (MD), respectively. Methods:Autopsy reports at the Clinical Department of Pathology in Lund from 1992–2017 were analyzed. All cases with a complete autopsy report and a neuropathologically diagnosed dementia disorder (AD, VaD, or MD) were selected on the condition of a clinical diagnosis of dementia. Clinical data were retrieved through medical records and the Swedish National Diabetes Register (NDR). A total of 268 subjects were included. Results:In AD, there was less CaVD as significantly less organ/tissue findings (p < 0.05), significantly less hypertension (p < 0.001), and likewise significantly less DM (p = 0.0014) than in VaD, with the MD group results being set between these two in all aspects studied. Conclusion:AD and VaD exhibit such different profiles of organ and vascular damage as well as of hypertension and DM that they clearly point toward different pathogenic origin with low likelihood of shared risk factors.
