White matter hyperintensities and microplastics

ABSTRACT Synopsis White matter hyperintensities are abnormalities that appear in MRI scans of living patients but are not apparent in MRI post-mortem. Goal Our goal is to understand the cellular/biological basis of white matter hyperintensities (WMH). Approach We aligned post-mortem MR scans with those collected ante-mortem and performed histopathology and pyrGC/MS for plastics on regions with WMH. Result PyrGC/MS detected large amounts of plastics and we determined their cellular locations with a novel optical imaging approach in regions with small vessel disease and Abeta plaques. Impact Microplastics in the brains of people with cognitive impairment may be due to pre-existing vascular injury or contribute to it. Many questions remain: Where do they come from, do they impair function? Can they be diagnosed by MRI ante-mortem?