RESUMEN
BACKGROUND: Memory clinic patients frequently present with different forms of vascular brain injury due to different etiologies, often co-occurring with Alzheimer's disease (AD) pathology. OBJECTIVE: We studied how cognition was affected by different forms of vascular brain injury, possibly in interplay with AD pathology. METHODS: We included 860 memory clinic patients with vascular brain injury on magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), receiving a standardized evaluation including cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) biomarker analyses (nâ=â541). The cognitive profile of patients with different forms of vascular brain injury on MRI (moderate/severe white matter hyperintensities (WMH) (nâ=â398), microbleeds (nâ=â368), lacunar (nâ=â188) and non-lacunar (nâ=â96) infarct(s), macrobleeds (nâ=â16)) was assessed by: 1) comparison of all these different forms of vascular brain injury with a reference group (patients with only mild WMH (nâ=â205) without other forms of vascular brain injury), using linear regression analyses also stratified for CSF biomarker AD profile and 2) multivariate linear regression analysis. RESULTS: The cognitive profile was remarkably similar across groups. Compared to the reference group effect sizes on all domains were <0.2 with narrow 95% confidence intervals, except for non-lacunar infarcts on information processing speed (age, sex, and education adjusted mean difference from reference group (ß: - 0.26, pâ=â0.05). Results were similar in the presence (nâ=â300) or absence (nâ=â241) of biomarker co-occurring AD pathology. In multivariate linear regression analysis, higher WMH burden was related to a slightly worse performance on attention and executive functioning (ß: - 0.08, pâ=â0.02) and working memory (ß: - 0.08, pâ=â0.04). CONCLUSION: Although different forms of vascular brain injury have different etiologies and different patterns of cerebral damage, they show a largely similar cognitive profile in memory clinic patients regardless of co-occurring AD pathology.