The association between white matter lesions and carotid plaque score: a retrospective study based on real-world...

To date, more and more studies have focused on the occurrence and development of white matter lesions. Instead, we explored the association between the occurrence of white matter lesions and carotid plaque scores in different populations.

We studied patients who underwent head MRI and blood tests from April 1, 2016 to October 30, 2017 at Shin Takeo Hospital, Japan. We used multiple logistic regression analysis to analyze the relationship between the occurrence of white matter lesions and carotid plaque score and validated their relationship in three different models.

A total of 1,904 patients aged 20-85 years were included in this study. There were 860 patients in the non-white matter lesion group and 1,044 patients in the white matter lesion group. The mean age of patients in the non-white matter lesion group was 49.93±10.76 years, and in the white matter lesion group was 61.60±9.15 years. We established multiple regression analyses for white matter lesion and carotid plaque scores and found that the risk of white matter lesions increased with increasing carotid plaque score. (Model 1 (OR (95% CI): 1.360 (1.276, 1.450), Model 2 (OR (95% CI): 1.122 (1.048, 1.200), Model 3 [OR (95% CI): 1.106 (1.032, 1.186)].

Our study found that the incidence of white matter lesions tended to increase with increasing carotid plaque scores, a trend that was more pronounced in younger female patients but was not so pronounced in older male patients.