METACOHORTS for the study of vascular disease and its contribution to cognitive decline and neurodegeneration: An initiative of the Joint Programme for Neurodegenerative Disease Research

Martin Dichgans, Joanna Wardlaw*, Eric Smith, Vera Zietemann, Sudha Seshadri, Perminder Sachdev, Geert Jan Biessels, Franz Fazekas, Oscar Benavente, Leonardo Pantoni, Frankerik De Leeuw, Bo Norrving, Paul Matthews, Christopher Chen, Vincent Mok, Marco Duering, Will Whiteley, Kirsten Shuler, Alvaro Alonso, Sandra E. BlackCarol Brayne, Hugues Chabriat, Charlotte Cordonnier, Fergus Doubal, Emrah Duzel, Michael Ewers, Richard Frayne, Vladimir Hachinski, Mohammad Arfan Ikram, Frank Jessen, Eric Jouvent, Jennifer Linn, John O'Brien, Robert van Oostenbrugge, Rainer Malik, Bernard Mazoyer, Reinhold Schmidt, Luciano A. Sposato, Blossom Stephan, Richard H. Swartz, Meike Vernooij, Anand Viswanathan, David Werring, Koji Abe, Louise Allan, Francesco Arba, Hee-Joon Bae, Philip M. W. Bath, Regis Bordet, Monique Breteler, Seong Choi, Ian Deary, Charles DeCarli, Klaus Ebmeier, Lei Feng, Steven M. Greenberg, Masafumi Ihara, Rajesh Kalaria, SanYun Kim, Jae-Sung Lim, Richard I. Lindley, Gillian Mead, Alison Murray, Terry Quinn, Craig Ritchie, Ralph Sacco, Rustam Al-Shahi Salman, Nikola Sprigg, Cathie Sudlow, Alan Thomas, Martin van Boxtel, Jeroen van der Grond, Aad van der Lugt, Yuan-Han Yang

*Corresponding author for this work

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Abstract

Dementia is a global problem and major target for health care providers. Although up to 45% of cases are primarily or partly due to cerebrovascular disease, little is known of these mechanisms or treatments because most dementia research still focuses on pure Alzheimer's disease. An improved understanding of the vascular contributions to neurodegeneration and dementia, particularly by small vessel disease, is hampered by imprecise data, including the incidence and prevalence of symptomatic and clinically "silent" cerebrovascular disease, long-term outcomes (cognitive, stroke, or functional), and risk factors. New large collaborative studies with long follow-up are expensive and time consuming, yet substantial data to advance the field are available. In an initiative funded by the Joint Programme for Neurodegenerative Disease Research, 55 international experts surveyed and assessed available data, starting with European cohorts, to promote data sharing to advance understanding of how vascular disease affects brain structure and function, optimize methods for cerebrovascular disease in neurodegeneration research, and focus future research on gaps in knowledge. Here, we summarize the results and recommendations from this initiative. We identified data from over 90 studies, including over 660,000 participants, many being additional to neurodegeneration data initiatives. The enthusiastic response means that cohorts from North America, Australasia, and the Asia Pacific Region are included, creating a truly global, collaborative, data sharing platform, linked to major national dementia initiatives. Furthermore, the revised World Health Organization International Classification of Diseases version 11 should facilitate recognition of vascular-related brain damage by creating one category for all cerebrovascular disease presentations and thus accelerate identification of targets for dementia prevention.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)1235-1249
Number of pages15
JournalAlzheimer's & Dementia
Volume12
Issue number12
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Dec 2016

Keywords

  • Dementia
  • Cerebrovascular disease
  • Small vessel disease
  • Neurodegeneration
  • Cohorts
  • Survey

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