Article

Cerebral amyloid angiopathy is diagnosed in stroke units after lobar
intracerebral hemorrhage.
CAA can also be diagnosed in memory clinics when
patients are referred for cognitive impairment assessment, and may be a reason
for admission to emergency or neurology departments because of rapidly
progressive cognitive or neurological decline, or a transient focal neurological
episode. CAA may even be observed in older community-dwelling individuals.
Neuropsychological impairment in CAA has been described over the past 20 years.
The symptoms most commonly reported are perceptual speed, episodic memory,
semantic memory, attention and executive function, and global cognitive
impairments. Psychiatric symptoms, such as personality changes, behavioral
disturbances and depression, have been more recently described. CAA is also a
risk factor for the development of dementia, and its relationship with
Alzheimer's disease has been demonstrated in post-mortem studies. Yet, despite
the increase in literature on CAA-related cognitive and psychiatric symptoms, the
specific characteristics of symptoms in CAA are difficult to assess because of
the substantial prevalence of comorbidities such as small vessel disease due to
high blood pressure, Lewy body disease and, of course, AD, all of which act as
important confounding factors. Also, within the entity of CAA itself, the
additive and perhaps synergistic effects of each lesion on cognition remain to be
assessed. In the present paper, the focus is on the latest evidence of
neuropsychological impairment observed in CAA patients, and the emergence of a
possible specific neuropsychological profile due to CAA is also discussed.
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