A link between frontal white matter integrity and dizziness in cerebral small vessel disease Link to paper on NeuroImage: Clinical Authors Richard T.Ibitoye, Patricia Castro, Josie Cooke, John Allum, Qadeer Arshad, Louisa Murdin, Joanna Wardlaw, Diego Kaski, David J. Sharp, Adolfo M. Bronstein Abstract One in three older people (>60 years) complain of dizziness which often remains unexplained despite specialist assessment. We investigated if dizziness was associated with vascular injury to white matter tracts relevant to balance or vestibular self-motion perception in sporadic cerebral small vessel disease (age-related microangiopathy). We prospectively recruited 38 vestibular clinic patients with idiopathic (unexplained) dizziness and 36 age-matched asymptomatic controls who underwent clinical, cognitive, balance, gait and vestibular assessments, and structural and diffusion brain MRI. Patients had more vascular risk factors, worse balance, worse executive cognitive function, and worse ankle vibration thresholds in association with greater white matter hyperintensity in frontal deep white matter, and lower fractional anisotropy in the genu of the corpus callosum and the right inferior longitudinal fasciculus. A large bihemispheric white matter network had less structural connectivity in patients. Reflex and perceptual vestibular function was similar in patients and controls. Our results suggest cerebral small vessel disease is involved in the genesis of dizziness through its effect on balance. Keywords Balance Dizziness Older Small vessel disease White matter Related links Link to paper on NeuroImage: Clinical Professor Joanna Wardlaw Brain & nervous system Small vessel disease (SVD) What is a MR scan? Social media tags and titles Featured paper: A link between frontal white matter integrity and dizziness in cerebral small vessel disease @EdinUniBrainSci @SVDResearch Publication date 18 Jul, 2022
