Stefanie Schreiber

Otto-von-Guericke University Magdeburg | OvGU · Dept. of Neurology

Regular physical activity is a cornerstone of healthy aging, offering a wide range of benefits, including the modulation of immune regulation and reduction of chronic inflammation. With aging closely linked to persistent, low-grade inflammation, i.e. inflammaging, the effects of exercise intensity on acute immune responses in older adults remain no...

Physical activity and exercise are low-cost interventions in primary and secondary prevention of several noncommunicable disease (e.g. cardiovascular diseases, chronic kidney disease, neurodegenerative and neurovascular disease). In the context of demographic change, the relative and absolute numbers of patients with neurological, especially neurod...

Chronic arterial hypertension disrupts the integrity of the cerebral microvasculature, doubling the risk of age-related dementia. Despite sufficient antihypertensive therapy, in still a significant proportion of individuals blood pressure lowering alone does not preserve cognitive health. Accumulating evidence highlights the role of inflammatory me...

Background Perivascular space (PVS) enlargement in ageing and Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and the drivers of such a structural change in humans require longitudinal investigation. Elucidating the effects of demographic factors, hypertension, cerebrovascular dysfunction, and AD pathology on PVS dynamics could inform the role of PVS in brain health func...

Background For over three decades, the concomitance of cortical neurodegeneration and white matter hyperintensities (WMH) has sparked discussions about their coupled temporal dynamics. Longitudinal studies supporting this hypothesis nonetheless remain scarce. Methods We applied global and regional bivariate latent growth curve modelling to determi...

Alzheimer’s disease (AD), as the most common form of dementia and leading cause for disability and death in old age, represents a major burden to healthcare systems worldwide. For the development of disease-modifying interventions and treatments, the detection of cognitive changes at the earliest disease stages is crucial. Recent advancements in mo...

Age-related differences in cortical microstructure are used to understand the neuronal mechanisms that underlie human brain ageing. The cerebral vasculature contributes to cortical ageing, but its precise interaction with cortical microstructure is poorly understood. In a cross-sectional study, we combine venous imaging with vessel distance mapping...

Background While several studies in cerebral amyloid angiopathy (CAA) focus on cognitive function, data on neuropsychiatric symptoms (NPS) and lifelong mental activities in these patients are scarce. Since NPS are associated with functional impairment, faster cognitive decline and faster progression to death, replication studies in more diverse set...

Zusammenfassung Kardiovaskuläre Risikofaktoren (Bluthochdruck, Rauchen, Übergewicht, Diabetes mellitus Typ 2, Dyslipidämie, körperliche Inaktivität) steigen mit zunehmendem Alter, insbesondere ab dem mittleren Erwachsenenalter, deutlich an, wobei Frauen wesentlich stärker betroffen sind. In der Bevölkerung Sachsen-Anhalts ist die Prävalenz kardiova...

Background: Preserving health and physical fitness is critical to ensure independent living across the lifespan. Lower levels of physical fitness are associated with age-related cognitive decline and a higher prevalence of mild cognitive impairment (MCI). Thus, this study investigates the influence of a six-month dance intervention on selected meas...

The neurotrophic growth factor brain‐derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) plays a crucial role in various neurodegenerative and psychiatric diseases, such as Alzheimer's disease, schizophrenia and depression. BDNF has been proposed as a potential biomarker for diagnosis, prognosis and monitoring therapy. Understanding the factors influencing BDNF lev...

Background: Preserving health and physical fitness is critical to ensure independent living across the lifespan. Lower levels of physical fitness are associated with age-related cognitive decline and a higher prevalence of mild cognitive impairment (MCI). Thus, this study investigates the influence of a six-month dance intervention on selected meas...

Background Chronic inflammatory demyelinating polyneuropathy (CIDP) is an inflammatory disease affecting the peripheral nerves and the most frequent autoimmune polyneuropathy. Given the lack of established biomarkers or risk factors for the development of CIDP and patients’ treatment response, this research effort seeks to identify potential clinic...

Background For over three decades, the concomitance of cortical neurodegeneration and white matter hyperintensities (WMH) has sparked discussions about their coupled temporal dynamics. Longitudinal studies supporting this hypothesis remain nonetheless scarce. Methods In this study, we applied regional and global bivariate latent growth curve modell...

Brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) is a crucial mediator of neuronal plasticity. Here, we investigated the effects of controlled normobaric hypoxia (NH) combined with physical inactivity on BDNF blood levels and executive functions. A total of 25 healthy adults (25.8 ± 3.3 years, 15 female) were analyzed in a randomized controlled cross-over...

: Background: Brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) is a crucial mediator of neuronal plasticity. Here, we investigated the effects of controlled normobaric hypoxia (NH) combined with physical inactivity on BDNF blood levels and executive functions. Methods: Twenty-five healthy adults (25.8±3.3 years, 15 female) were analyzed in a randomized, co...

Enlarged perivascular spaces (EPVS) are common in cerebral small vessel disease (CSVD) and have been identified as a marker of dysfunctional brain clearance. However, it remains unknown if the enlargement occurs predominantly around arteries or veins. We combined in vivo ultra-high-resolution MRI and histopathology to investigate the spatial relati...

Background: Co-occurrence of cerebral small vessel disease (CSVD) is common in aging and Alzheimer disease (AD) dementia, but, in symptomatic CSVD prevalence and role of AD and neurodegenerative co-pathologies have been less explored. Methods: In vivo determination of prevalence, predictors and relevance for cognition of AD and neurodegenerative co...

Chronic arterial hypertension restructures the vascular architecture of the brain, leading to a series of pathological responses that culminate in cerebral small vessel disease. Pericytes respond dynamically to vascular challenges; however, how they manifest under the continuous strain of hypertension has not been elucidated. Therefore, in this stu...

The well-known decrease in finger dexterity during healthy aging leads to a significant reduction in quality of life. Still, the exact patterns of altered finger kinematics of older adults in daily life are fairly unexplored. Finger interdependence is the unintentional co-movement of fingers that are not intended to move, and it is known to vary ac...

Objective Epidemiological data indicate a high prevalence of cognitive dysfunction and dementia risk in patients with heart failure with preserved ejection fraction (HFpEF). However, underlying mechanisms are yet not fully understood. Common risk factors for HFpEF and cognitive decline are hypertension and arterial stiffness, which are characterize...

Inferior frontal sulcal hyperintensities (IFSHs) on fluid-attenuated inversion recovery (FLAIR) sequences have been proposed to be indicative of glymphatic dysfunction. Replication studies in large and diverse samples are nonetheless needed to confirm them as an imaging biomarker. We investigated whether IFSHs were tied to Alzheimer’s disease (AD)...

Background Pathogenic heterozygous mutations in the progranulin gene (GRN) are a key cause of frontotemporal dementia (FTD), leading to significantly reduced biofluid concentrations of the progranulin protein (PGRN). This has led to a number of ongoing therapeutic trials aiming to treat this form of FTD by increasing PGRN levels in mutation carrier...

Background Sporadic cerebral small-vessel disease (CSVD), i.e., hypertensive arteriopathy (HA) and cerebral amyloid angiopathy (CAA), is the main cause of spontaneous intracerebral hemorrhage (ICH). Nevertheless, a substantial portion of ICH cases arises from non-CSVD etiologies, such as trauma, vascular malformations, and brain tumors. While studi...

Introduction: Non-adherence to recommended secondary preventive anticoagulation in stroke patients with atrial fibrillation (AF) is a common phenomenon although the introduction of direct oral anticoagulants (DOACs) has simplified anticoagulation management for physicians as well as for patients. Methods: We examined the adherence of secondary p...

Neuroinflammation is a hallmark of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and both positive and negative associations of individual inflammation-related markers with brain structure and cognitive function have been described. We aimed to identify inflammatory signatures of CSF immune-related markers that relate to changes of brain structure and cognition across...

Background Altered fluctuations in blood oxygen level dependent (BOLD) signal during resting‐state functional magnetic resonance imaging (rs‐fMRI) have been considered indicative of decreased cerebrovascular health. Previous studies reported changes in BOLD fluctuations associated with Alzheimer’s dementia (AD) and white matter hyperintensities (WM...

Background Patients with Alzheimer’s disease (AD) often show problems in spatial navigation. However, spatial navigation is rarely investigated in real world settings and in people at early disease stages. Capitalizing on recent advancements in digital technologies, we measured the performance of healthy younger (YA) and older adults (OA), as well...

Background Patients with Alzheimer’s disease (AD) often show problems in spatial navigation. However, spatial navigation is rarely investigated in real world settings and in people at early disease stages. Capitalizing on recent advancements in digital technologies, we measured the performance of healthy younger (YA) and older adults (OA), as well...

Background Perivascular spaces in the brain can become enlarged (ePVS); their temporal dynamics remain under increasing debate. We studied automatic ePVS measurements obtained from 870 subjects along the AD continuum over the course of three years. Method We measured centrum semiovale (CSO) and basal ganglia (BG) ePVS volumes computationally in th...

Background Independent contributions of enlarged perivascular spaces (ePVS) to cognition remain elusive due to their intertwining with white matter hyperintensities (WMH). We studied the unique and shared effects of ePVS and WMH on cognitive performance in 397 subjects along the Alzheimer’s disease (AD) continuum. Methods We quantified baseline vo...

Background Inflammation, vascular disease and Alzheimer’s Disease (AD) appear to be closely linked. We recently showed that increased vascular risk relates to certain inflammatory profiles in CSF in the DELCODE cohort (Hayek et al, AAIC 2022). Moreover, we found cerebrovascular alterations in posterior‐midline regions including precuneus in subject...

Background Inflammation, vascular disease and Alzheimer’s Disease (AD) appear to be closely linked. We recently showed that increased vascular risk relates to certain inflammatory profiles in CSF in the DELCODE cohort (Hayek et al, AAIC 2022). Moreover, we found cerebrovascular alterations in posterior‐midline regions including precuneus in subject...

Background Altered fluctuations in blood oxygen level dependent (BOLD) signal during resting‐state functional magnetic resonance imaging (rs‐fMRI) have been considered indicative of decreased cerebrovascular health. Previous studies reported changes in BOLD fluctuations associated with Alzheimer’s dementia (AD) and white matter hyperintensities (WM...

Age-related differences in cortical microstructure are used to understand the neuronal mechanisms that underlie human brain ageing. The cerebral vasculature contributes to cortical ageing, but its precise influence on age-related differences in cortical microstructure is poorly understood. In a cross-sectional study, we combine venous imaging with...

Vascular risk factors such as chronic hypertension are well-established major modifiable factors for the development of cerebral small vessel disease (cSVD). In the present study, our focus was the investigation of cSVD-related phenotypic changes in microglia in human disease and in the spontaneously hypertensive stroke-prone rat (SHRSP) model of c...

Zusammenfassung Die sporadische zerebrale Mikroangiopathie umfasst altersabhängige Veränderungen der kleinen Hirngefäße, die durch das Vorliegen vaskulärer Risikofaktoren beschleunigt werden. Die mikrovaskulären Wandveränderungen entwickeln sich eher langsam, mit möglichem Beginn bereits in der mittleren Lebensphase – über Dekaden – und zeigen eine...

Introduction Heart failure with preserved ejection fraction (HFpEF) accounts for more than 50% of all heart failure cases and is associated with increased morbidity and mortality. However, the underlying mechanisms of HFpEF are not fully understood. One potential mechanism is an endothelial/vascular dysfunction preceding cardiovascular co-morbiditi...

Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) is a rapidly progressing neurodegenerative disease characterised by the loss of motor control. Current understanding of ALS pathology is largely based on post-mortem investigations at advanced disease stages. A systematic in-vivo description of the microstructural changes that characterise early-stage ALS, and th...

Background: Perivascular space (PVS) enlargement in ageing and Alzheimer's disease (AD) and its exacerbators require further investigation. Methods: We studied centrum semiovale (CSO) and basal ganglia (BG) PVS computationally over three to four annual visits in 557 participants of the DZNE multicentre DELCODE cohort. We tested volumetric changes o...

Background: Studies on risk factors for primary intracerebral haemorrhage (ICH) focus on short-term predictive values of distinct clinical parameters or computed tomography (CT) markers and disregard the others. We, therefore, studied independent predictive values of demographic, clinical, and CT markers regarding ICH expansion, late ICH recurrenc...

Vascular risk factors such as chronic hypertension are well established major modifiable factors for the development of cerebral small vessel disease (cSVD). In the present study, our focus was the investigation of cSVD-related phenotypic changes in microglia in human disease and in the spontaneously hypertensive stroke-prone rat (SHRSP) model of c...

Introduction Given its wide availability and cost-effectiveness, multidimensional flow cytometry (mFC) became a core method in the field of immunology allowing for the analysis of a broad range of individual cells providing insights into cell subset composition, cellular behavior, and cell-to-cell interactions. Formerly, the analysis of mFC data so...

Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) is a rapidly progressing neurodegenerative disease characterised by the loss of motor control. Current understanding of ALS pathology is largely based on the post-mortem investigation of advanced disease. A precise in-vivo description of the microstructural changes that characterize early disease stages, and thei...

Authors use various media formats to convey disease information to a broad audience, from articles and videos to interviews or documentaries. These media often include human characters, such as patients or treating physicians, who are involved with the disease. While artistic media, such as hand‐crafted illustrations and animations are used for hea...

Background and Objectives: Ultrasound (US) is a non-invasive tool for the in vivo detection of peripheral nerve alterations. Materials and Methods: In this study, we applied nerve US to assist the discrimination between the spectrum of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS, n = 11), chronic inflammatory demyelinating polyradiculoneuropathy (CIDP, n =...

Alzheimer's disease (AD), as a leading cause for disability and death in old age, represents a major burden to healthcare systems worldwide. For the development of disease-modifying interventions and treatments, the detection of cognitive changes at the earliest disease stages is crucial. Recent advancements in mobile consumer technologies provide...

Cerebral small vessel disease (CSVD) is the main cause of intracerebral hemorrhage (ICH). However, a substantial portion is also caused by non-CSVD etiologies, including trauma, vascular malformations and brain tumors. In this retrospective observational study, we compared factors that predispose to the onset of ICH, namely demographics, antithromb...

Abstract Background White matter hyperintensities (WMH) in subjects across the Alzheimer’s disease (AD) spectrum with minimal vascular pathology suggests that amyloid pathology—not just arterial hypertension—impacts WMH, which in turn adversely influences cognition. Here we seek to determine the effect of both hypertension and Aβ positivity on WMH,...

Background and Objectives: Ultrasound (US) is a non-invasive tool for the in-vivo detection of peripheral nerve alterations. Materials and Methods: In this study we applied nerve US to assist the discrimination between the spectrum of Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS, n=11), chronic inflammatory demyelinating polyradiculoneuropathy (CIDP, n=5) an...

This scientific commentary refers to “Functional connectivity in older adults – the effect of cerebral small vessel disease” by Drenth et al. (https://doi.org/10.1093/braincomms/fcad126)

The association between cerebral blood supply and cognition has been widely discussed in the recent literature. One focus of this discussion has been the anatomical variability of the circle of Willis, with morphological differences being present in more than half of the general population. While previous studies have attempted to classify these di...

Topographic maps form a critical feature of cortical organization, yet are poorly described with respect to their microstructure in the living aging brain. We acquired quantitative structural and functional 7T-MRI data from younger and older adults to characterize layer-wise topographic maps of the primary motor cortex (M1). Using parcellation-insp...

Brain vascular health appears to be critical for preventing the development of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and slowing its progression. ALS patients often demonstrate cardiovascular risk factors and commonly suffer from cerebrovascular disease, with evidence of pathological alterations in their small cerebral blood vessels. Impaired vascula...

Background Cerebral microbleeds (MBs) are a hallmark of cerebral small vessel disease (CSVD) and can be found on T2*-weighted sequences on MRI. Quantitative susceptibility mapping (QSM) is a postprocessing method that also enables MBs identification and furthermore allows to differentiate them from calcifications. Aims We explored the implications...

The brain’s extracellular matrix (ECM) is assumed to undergo rearrangements in Alzheimer’s disease (AD). Here, we investigated changes of key components of the hyaluronan-based ECM in independent samples of post-mortem brains (N = 19), cerebrospinal fluids (CSF; N = 70), and RNAseq data (N = 107; from The Aging, Dementia and TBI Study) of AD patien...

Tobacco smoking is strongly linked to vascular damage contributing to the development of hypertension, atherosclerosis, as well as increasing the risk for neurodegeneration. Still, the involvement of the innate immune system in the development of vascular damage upon chronic tobacco use before the onset of clinical symptoms is not fully characteriz...

Brain vascular health appears to be of critical importance for protection against the development of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) as well as the slowing of disease progression. ALS patients often demonstrate cardiovascular risk factors and commonly suffer from cerebrovascular disease, with evidence of pathological alterations in the small ce...

The primary somatosensory cortex (SI) contains fine-grained tactile representations of the body, arranged in an orderly fashion. Using ultra-high resolution fMRI data to describe such detailed individual topographic maps or to detect group differences is challenging, because group alignment often does not preserve the high spatial detail of the dat...

Chronic arterial hypertension causes cerebral microvascular dysfunction and doubles dementia risk in aging. However, cognitive health preservation by therapeutic blood pressure lowering alone is limited and depends on disease duration, the degree of irreversible tissue damage and whether microvascular function can be restored. This study aimed to u...

The association between cerebral blood supply and cognition has gained increasing interest, considering the remarkable anatomical variability of the circle of Willis. Thus, qualitative classifications of the arteries contributing to the hippocampal supply has been performed in previous studies to determine whether the additional presence of vessels...

During normal aging and, particularly, during pathological aging, people often show problems in spatial navigation (SN), rendering it a promising marker of cognitive health in the elderly. However, SN is rarely investigated in people experiencing subjective cognitive decline (SCD), which is considered a very early stage of Alzheimer’s disease. Impa...

While narrative visualization has been used successfully in various applications to communicate scientific data in the format of a story to a general audience, the same has not been true for medical data. There are only a few exceptions that present tabular medical data to non-experts. However, a key component of medical visualization is the intera...

Background The aim of our study was to assess the perceived mental health impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on people with schizophrenia spectrum disorder (SSD) in an inpatient forensic psychiatric institution and to identify personal networks most crucial for the patient during the pandemic. Methods In this cross-sectional survey study, 44 patients...

Dieser Übersichtsartikel befasst sich mit der Prävention und Therapie vaskulär bedingter kognitiver Beeinträchtigungen (engl. vascular cognitive impairment [VCI]), inklusive der vaskulären Demenz. Vaskuläre Demenzen sind mit einem Anteil von 10 bis 15 % die zweithäufigste Demenzursache. Zusätzlich zeigt sich bei bis zu 75 % aller Demenzen eine vask...

Background Posterior white matter hyperintensities (WMH) in subjects across the Alzheimer's disease (AD) spectrum with minimal vascular pathology suggests that amyloid pathology—not just arterial hypertension—impacts WMH, adversely influencing cognition. Here we seek to determine the effect of both hypertension and Aβ positivity on WMH, and their i...