The clinical characteristics of cognitive impairment in patients with vascular mild cognitive impairment

Abstract Background To investigate the characteristics of the cognitive impairment in patients with vascular mild cognitive impairment (VaMCI). Method Seventy‐five patients with VaMCI and 38 age, gender‐matched healthy subjects were recruited from the department of Neurology, Beijing Chaoyang Hospital, Capital Medical University. All the participant underwent the neuropsychological tests. The Fazekas scale was used to assess the severity of white matter lesions, and the medial temporal lobe atrophy (MTA) to evaluate the atrophic severity of medial temporal lobe. Result The results of our study showed that patients with VaMCI were associated with comprehensive cognitive function deficits, including MMSE (25.7±2.3 vs 28.4±2.0) MoCA (22.8±3.9 vs 26.3±3.7), AVLD‐I (5.1±1.0 vs 8.9±1.9), AVLT‐D (3.7±1.0 vs 9.8±1.5) and AVLT‐R (7.6±1.9 vs 12±1.5) (P<0.05). Correlation analysis showed that the scale of medial temporal lobe atrophy had a negative relationship with the performance of MoCA (r=‐0.434, P=0.002). Conclusion Our findings demonstrate patients with VaMCI were closely correlated to cognitive impairment, especially with memory decline, which may be attributed to white matter lesions and the atrophy of medial temporal lobe.