Cerebral amyloid angiopathy (CAA) is one of the major types of cerebral small vessel disease, and a leading cause of spontaneous intracerebral hemorrhage and cognitive decline in elderly patients. Although increasingly detected, a number of aspects including the pathophysiology, the clinical and neuroradiological phenotype and the disease course are still under investigation. The incomplete knowledge of the disease limits the implementation of evidence based guidelines on patient's clinical management and the development of treatments able to prevent or reduce disease progression.
The SENECA (SEarchiNg biomarkErs of Cerebral Angiopathy) project is the first Italian multicentre cohort study aimed at better defining the disease natural history and identifying clinical and neuroradiological markers of disease progression. By a multidisciplinary approach and the collection of a large and well phenotyped series and biorepository of CAA patients, the study is ultimately expected to improve the diagnosis and the knowledge of CAA pathophysiological mechanisms.
All consecutive patients ≥55 years (with the exception of genetic cases), referred to the participating centres, with a diagnosis of possible probable and definite symptomatic or asymptomatic CAA, defined according to the modified Boston neuroradiological criteria, who had undergone at least one brain MRI (mandatory requirement for inclusion of the patient in the study) will be recruited.
evidence of other causes of cerebral hemorrhage (brain tumors, arteriovenous malformations, aneurysms, cavernous angiomas), contraindications to brain MRI, pregnancy and breastfeeding