Vascular cognitive impairment: introduction.

One of the greatest advances in the understanding of cognitive disorders comes from the realization that Alzheimer disease (AD) and vascular cognitive impairment share common risk factors. This opens the door to a common approach to both and promises that if vascular risk factors are controlled, then not only strokes but also cognitive impairment could be prevented. It also has become evident that AD pathology and vascular lesions often coexist in the brains of the elderly. Less certain is whether the effects are additive or multiplicative. Gorelick1 reviews and categorizes systematically the different …