Guest Editors: Prof Hugh Markus and Prof John O'Brien
Recent evidence suggests that vascular risk factors predispose to Alzheimer’s dementia, and subclinical vascular disease, while cerebrovascular pathology interacts with Alzheimer’s pathology to increase the chance of an individual suffering clinical dementia. This raises the question as to whether treatment of vascular risk factors, either on a population basis prior to the development of dementia, or in patients with established Alzheimer’s disease, could reduce the burden of dementia. Novel treatment approaches to Alzheimer’s, such as targeting the vascular angle, are particularly important in view of the recent disappointing results from clinical trials targeting the amyloid hypothesis of Alzheimer’s disease.
This short series of articles in BMC Medicine, covers this topical area. In a review article, Kurt Jellinger and Johannes Attems examines the evidence that vascular pathology does interact with Alzheimer’s disease and how this interaction may occur. In another review article, Renée de Bruijn and Mohammad A Ikram look at whether cardiovascular risk factors increase the risk that individuals will develop Alzheimer’s disease. In patients with established Alzheimer’s disease the important question is whether treatment of vascular risk factors can modify disease course and this question is examined in a systematic review by Raffaella Valenti and colleagues.
All articles in this collection have been independently prepared by the authors and have been subject to the standard peer-review processes of the journal.