WSO Cerebral Small Vessel Disease & Vascular Cognitive Impairment (cSVD-VCI) Task Force

30 Mar 2021

Background/Purpose

Research into cerebral small vessel diseases (cSVD) has blossomed over the past 2 decades. While there are many reasons for such heightened interest in these conditions, one major factor is the visibility of many brain lesions attributable to cSVDs on clinical neuroimaging. Cerebral microbleeds, cortical superficial siderosis, white matter disease, lacunar infarcts, cerebral microinfarcts, and enlarged perivascular spaces are all visible on commonly obtained brain MRI sequences. Molecular PET studies and physiological MRI provide further mechanistic information. cSVDs are major causes of intracerebral hemorrhage as well as ischemic brain injury. NIH identified cSVD as a major contributor to vascular cognitive impairment (VCI) and dementia, therefore a top research priority. The result of the improved funding and development of multidisciplinary collaborations is an increasing number of high-quality research publications. Despite such growing interest, the translation of these findings into clinical practice and clinical trials have been very slow. Major drawbacks are the lack of understanding of these concepts by clinicians, lack of standard nomenclature, lack of consensus about the clinical meaning of cSVD and finally lack of multidisciplinary collaborations to incorporate cSVDs into clinical trials in the realms of stroke and VCI prevention. The proposed WSO Cerebral Small Vessel Disease Task Force aims to bridge these gaps to improve the understanding of cSVD and VCI within the medical and lay communities and to facilitate translational multidisciplinary work in the field of cSVD.

Planning educational activities to improve the detection of cSVD markers and the understanding of its clinical impact on stroke and cognitive impairment risks within neurology, neuroradiology, cardiology and other communities
Standardizing the nomenclature used in cSVD/VCI fields
Sponsoring workshops worldwide to facilitate translational research that will incorporate cSVD markers
Working with WHO to promote clinical and research efforts aimed at preventing and treating cSVD and VCI on a global scale

Task Force Chair

Edip Gurol, MD, MSc (Neurologist, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA)

Vice Chair

Hsin-Hsin (Cynthia) Tsai, MD (Neurologist, National Taiwan University, Taiwan)

Task Force Members

Amy Towfighi, MD (Neurologist, University of South California, LA, CA)
Bo Norrving, MD (Neurologist, Lund University, Sweden)
Dong Eog Kim, MD, PhD (Neurologist, Dongguk University, Seoul, South Korea)
Eitan Auriel, MD (Neurologist, Rabin Medical Center, Israel)
Hugh Markus, MD, PhD (Neurologist, University of Cambridge, UK)
Kazunori Toyoda, MD, PhD (National Cardiovascular Center, Osaka, Japan)
Meike Vernooij, MD, PhD (Neuroradiologist, Erasmus Univ, Rotterdam, Netherlands)
Prashant Sanders, MD , PhD (Cardiologist, University of Adelaide, Adelaide, Australia)
Stéphanie Debette, MD, PhD (Neurologist, Bordeaux University, France)

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