PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - B.J. MacIntosh
AU  - W. Swardfager
AU  - A.D. Robertson
AU  - E. Tchistiakova
AU  - M. Saleem
AU  - P.I. Oh
AU  - N. Herrmann
AU  - B. Stefanovic
AU  - K.L. Lanctôt
TI  - Regional Cerebral Arterial Transit Time Hemodynamics Correlate with Vascular Risk Factors and Cognitive Function in Men with Coronary Artery Disease
AID  - 10.3174/ajnr.A4094
DP  - 2014 Aug 21
TA  - American Journal of Neuroradiology
4099  - http://www.ajnr.org/content/early/2014/08/21/ajnr.A4094.short
4100  - http://www.ajnr.org/content/early/2014/08/21/ajnr.A4094.full
AB  - BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE: Arterial transit time is the time needed for blood to travel from large arteries to capillaries, as estimated from arterial spin-labeling MR imaging. The purpose of this study was to determine whether vascular risk factors and cognitive performance are related to regional differences in cerebral arterial transit time in patients with coronary artery disease who are at risk for cognitive decline. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Arterial transit time was estimated from multiple postlabel delay pseudocontinuous arterial spin-labeling images obtained from 29 men with coronary artery disease. Tests of memory, attention, processing speed, and executive function were administered. Principal component analysis was used to create separate models of cognition and vascular risk, which were related to brain regions through voxelwise analyses of arterial transit time maps. RESULTS: Principal component analysis identified 2 components of vascular risk: 1) “pressor” (age, systolic blood pressure, and pulse pressure) and 2) “obesity” (body fat percentage and body mass index). Obesity was inversely related to arterial transit time in the posterior cingulate, precuneus, lateral occipital cortices, middle temporal gyrus, and frontal pole (P corrected < .05), whereas pressor was not significant. Cognitive scores were factored into a single component. Poor performance was inversely related to precuneus arterial transit time (P corrected < .05). The average arterial transit time in regions identified by obesity was associated with poorer cognitive function (r2 = 0.21, t = -2.65, P = .01). CONCLUSIONS: Altered cerebral hemodynamics, notably in nodal structures of the default mode network, may be one way that vascular risk factors impact cognition in patients with coronary artery disease. Abbreviations ASLarterial spin-labelingATTarterial transit timeBMIbody mass indexCADcoronary artery diseasecog-PCcognitive principal componentCVLT-LDFRCalifornia Verbal Learning Test long-delay free recallLATTlarge-artery transit timePCprincipal componentSBPsystolic blood pressure