Vascular factors in dementia: an overview.

Alzheimer's disease and cerebrovascular disease are two illnesses common to the elderly. Conventional wisdom has sought to separately describe and treat these two diseases. Accumulating evidence, however, shows that cerebrovascular risk factors may cause asymptomatic brain injury, share genetic risk with Alzheimer's disease and possibly accelerate the Alzheimer's process. Such evidence suggests that these two diseases may act additively or synergistically to cause clinical dementia. This review focuses on evolving data that support this hypothesis.