Incidence of Brain Vascular Damage in a Population With Parkinson's Disease: Statistical Comparison by Age Subassemblies With Age Homogeneous Control Groups

We recently published studies on the incidence significance of cerebrovascular disease (CVD) in Parkinson's disease (PD) and some related movement disorders. The CVD was assessed by including lesions morphologically diagnosed by magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) or computed tomography (CT) scan studies that defined ischemic vascular damage with a range from leukoaraiosis to multiple microinfarcts with various distribution, minor stroke, and major stroke and hemorrhagic lesions. These lesions were detected at the beginning of Parkinsonian symptoms or earlier; in any case, all the patients were diagnosed as PD patients according to the international classification and response to therapy. These studies have shown in a large age-range (40-96 years old) group of patients with PD that CVD was more severe and extensive if compared to a control population that is relatively homogeneous for age. Furthermore, carrying out the same comparison with other extrapyramidal diseases, such as essential tremor (ET), this statistical significance was still present while it was not when the investigation was performed between ET and the same control group. Therefore, we decided to deepen the study about the incidence of CVD in the different groups by adding a higher level, namely, considering different age subassemblies. We carried out this study because it is commonly assumed that CVD is a simple comorbidity in aged patients, so it was interesting to check if this pathology was present even in a younger age group.