Tuesday > March 7 > 2006 
  
Brain's 'sleeper cells' stalking boomers
Lesions occur without symptoms, but lead to diminished cognitive powers, strokes
  
TOM BLACKWELL 
CanWest News Service 


Tuesday, March 07, 2006
http://www.rotman-baycrest.on.ca/rotmansite/home.php

For years, doctors would notice tiny abnormalities in the brains of older
patients who had undergone diagnostic scans, writing off the phenomenon as a
normal, harmless part of aging.

But newer imaging technology and other research is beginning to uncover a more
menacing truth, one experts say should set off alarm bells for millions of baby
boomers.

Those lesions in the brain's white matter are like dangerous "sleeper cells"
that usually occur without symptoms but can prematurely chip away at cognitive
powers and make patients more likely to suffer crippling strokes, a major
neurological conference heard yesterday.

And that white-matter disease occurs to varying degrees in a disturbing number
of older people, with one study suggesting 95 per cent of those over 65 have at
least some damage.

"The ubiquity of these lesions is really quite frightening," said Sandra Black,
a neurologist at Toronto's Sunnybrook and Women's College Health Sciences
Centre.

"They really are the sleeper cells of cerebrovascular disease. This silent,
progressive disorder is going to wreck your life if you get to 75 or 85, make
you less able to do the things you want to do."

Risk factors for the white-matter lesions include a familiar list of culprits -
high cholesterol, lack of exercise, diabetes and especially high blood pressure.

It is clear that those silent brain attackers can be added to heart disease and
strokes as the potential cost of a sedentary, high-cholesterol, obese lifestyle,
Black said.

Also discussed at the Rotman Research Institute conference was vascular
dementia, where such blood-flow mishaps in the brain cause the kind of
short-term memory loss and other impairments more often associated with
Alzheimer's disease.

Black said risk factors like diabetes or high blood pressure lead to
obstructions in the small blood vessels that lead to the brain's white matter,
which acts as a transmitter of information. That temporary shutting-off of the
supply causes damage, but not enough to affect motor ability or speech, or
usually even for the person to notice that it is happening, she said.

However, research is increasingly showing that as the events occur over time,
cognitive ability begins to diminish, affecting, for instance, how quickly
someone can process information.

"That may not seem like much, but if you're multi-tasking or doing complex
activities, you have to be keeping a lot of different balls in the air, a lot of
different things in your head," Black said.

What is more, the presence of such lesions has been shown in some studies to
increase the risk of having a stroke threefold, and the risk of developing
dementia by almost as much.

The disorder can also accelerate the progress of Alzheimer's in people who
suffer from that illness.

But neurologists seem to get interested only when patients develop severe
illness, paying little attention to the "neglected majority of patients" who
suffer silent, vascular attacks in the brain, said Vladimir Hachinski, a
neurologist in London, Ont., and vice-president of the World Federation of
Neurology.

Online Extra: Stroke victims may be able to regain use of a weak arm. Find out
more at our website: www.montrealgazette.com

C The Gazette (Montreal) 2006
 




 
 
 
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