{"id":249064,"date":"2025-09-23T13:43:14","date_gmt":"2025-09-23T13:43:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/249064\/"},"modified":"2025-09-23T13:43:14","modified_gmt":"2025-09-23T13:43:14","slug":"scientists-uncover-overlooked-contributor-to-dementia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/249064\/","title":{"rendered":"Scientists Uncover Overlooked Contributor to Dementia"},"content":{"rendered":"

\t\t\"Dementia<\/a>Vascular dementia\u2014damage from the brain\u2019s smallest vessels\u2014may be more varied, and more entangled with Alzheimer\u2019s, than assumed. Credit: Shutterstock<\/p>\n

A new model of vascular dementia reveals hidden disease processes and raises urgent questions about the role of microplastics in brain health.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Vascular dementia, a form of cognitive decline caused by disease in the brain\u2019s small blood vessels, is common but has been studied less intensively than Alzheimer\u2019s disease, which is marked by abnormal plaques and protein tangles in neural tissue.<\/p>\n

A University of New Mexico researcher aims to change that.<\/p>\n

In a recent paper highlighted by the editors of the American Journal of Pathology, Elaine Bearer, MD, PhD, the Harvey Family Endowed and Distinguished Professor in the UNM School of Medicine\u2019s Department of Pathology, introduces a framework to define and classify different types of vascular dementia.<\/p>\n

She hopes the approach will help researchers better understand the disease\u2019s variants and speed the development of effective treatments.<\/p>\n

Multiple Risk Factors and New Concerns<\/p>\n

Conditions like hypertension, atherosclerosis and diabetes have been linked to vascular dementia, but other contributing causes, including the recent discovery of significant quantities of nano\u2013 and microplastics in human brains<\/a>, remain poorly understood, Bearer said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have been flying blind,\u201d she said. \u201cThe various vascular pathologies have not been comprehensively defined, so we haven\u2019t known what we\u2019re treating. And we didn\u2019t know that nano\u2013 and microplastics were in the picture, because we couldn\u2019t see them.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bearer identified 10 different disease processes that contribute to vascular-based brain injury, typically by causing oxygen or nutrient deficiency, leakage of blood serum, and inflammation or decreased waste elimination. These cause tiny strokes that harm neurons. She lists new and existing experimental techniques, including special stains and novel microscopy, to detect them.<\/p>\n

For the paper, Bearer used a specialized microscope to meticulously study tissue from a repository of brains donated by the families of New Mexicans who had died with dementia, employing stains that highlighted the damaged blood vessels. Surprisingly, many patients diagnosed with Alzheimer\u2019s disease also had disease in the small blood vessels of the brain.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe suspect that in New Mexico maybe a half of our Alzheimer\u2019s people also have vascular disease,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Toward Better Diagnosis and Treatment<\/p>\n

Bearer contends a methodical approach to identifying different forms of vascular dementia will help neurologists and neuropathologists more accurately score the severity of the disease in both living and deceased patients and advance the search for potential treatments \u2014 and even cures. To make that happen, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) has raised the possibility of forming a consensus group of leading neuropathologists to work out a new classification and scoring system, she said.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, a fresh area of concern is the unknown health consequences of nano\u2013 and microplastics in the brain, Bearer said.<\/p>\n

\u201cNanoplastics in the brain represent a new player on the field of brain pathology,\u201d she said. \u201cAll our current thinking about Alzheimer\u2019s disease and other dementias needs to be revised in light of this discovery.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat I\u2019m finding is that there\u2019s a lot more plastics in demented people than in normal subjects,\u201d she said. \u201cIt seems to correlate with the degree and type of dementia.\u201d<\/p>\n

The quantity of plastics also was associated with higher levels of inflammation, she said.<\/p>\n

Bearer\u2019s work builds on years of collaboration with Gary Rosenberg, MD, professor of Neurology and director of the UNM Alzheimer\u2019s Disease Research Center (ADRC), which won a five-year $21.7 million NIH grant<\/a> in 2024 that supported Bearer\u2019s research. Rosenberg, a longtime chair of the UNM Department of Neurology and also director of the UNM Center for Memory & Aging, has published extensively on the association of vascular disease with dementia symptoms.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen we started thinking about putting this ADRC together, I thought one of the things I should look at is the vasculature, because nobody\u2019s done it systematically and comprehensively, and we have a world\u2019s expert here at UNM,\u201d Bearer said.<\/p>\n

\u201cDescribing the pathological changes in this comprehensive way is really new. What I\u2019m hoping will come out of this paper is working with other neuropathology ADRC cores across the country to develop consensus guidelines for classifying vascular changes and the impact of nano\u2013 and microplastics on the brain.\u201d<\/p>\n

Reference: \u201cExploring Vascular Contributions to Cognitive Impairment\u201d by Elaine L. Bearer, 8 August 2025, The American Journal of Pathology.
DOI: 10.1016\/j.ajpath.2025.07.007<\/a><\/p>\n

Never miss a breakthrough: Join the SciTechDaily newsletter.<\/a><\/b><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Vascular dementia\u2014damage from the brain\u2019s smallest vessels\u2014may be more varied, and more entangled with Alzheimer\u2019s, than assumed. Credit:…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":249065,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[4465,632,210,912,67,132,129037,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-249064","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-health","8":"tag-brain","9":"tag-dementia","10":"tag-health","11":"tag-neurology","12":"tag-united-states","13":"tag-unitedstates","14":"tag-university-of-new-mexico","15":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115253910654186654","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/249064","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=249064"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/249064\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/249065"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=249064"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=249064"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=249064"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}