Dear Readers followers,

Since cerebral microbleeds (CMBs) are mostly clinically silent without clinical manifestations, could they become a source or cause for excessive iron accumulation and brain iron overload overtime. Accumulation of CMBs are known to be predictive of neurodegeneration and impaired cognition that are associated with brain atrophy.

CMBs are associated with microvessel SVD and damage to the microcirculation that associate with periventricular WMH.

Lv K et al. have previously hypothesized that CMBs might be linked to brain atrophy through pathological conditions, such as chronic cerebral hypoperfusion cerebral hypoperfusion with associated neurodegeneration neuronal synapse dysfunction and/or loss are NEURON LOSS and brain atrophy over time:

[ Lv K et al. The iron burden of cerebral microbleeds contributes to brain atrophy through the mediating effect of white matter hyperintensity. Neuroimage. 2023;281:120370. doi: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2023 ]

The iron burden of cerebral microbleeds may contribute to brain atrophy through the mediating effect of white matter hyperintensity and chronic cerebral hypoperfusion.

They concluded the following: "Our study confirmed that PVWMH correlated with brain atrophy and served as an independent risk factor for the total iron burden of CMBs. PVWMH may play a mediating role between the total iron burden of CMBs and brain atrophy, and further pathological studies are needed to demonstrate this effect."

Further thoughts by author of this question:

Since CMBs contain iron could this be a cause for brain iron overload that contributes to increased oxidative-redox stress (OxRS) mechanisms with chronic neuroinflammation since OxRS and neuroinflammation create a chronic ongoing vicious cycle that could contribute to neurodegeneration.

Author is interested in the thoughts of the readers on this subject.

Please feel free to comment and provide other interesting references.

Melvin R Hayden

University of Missouri School of Medicine

Columbia, Missouri USA

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