Cognitive impairment in two subtypes of a single subcortical infarction

Background: Single subcortical infarction (SSI) is caused by two main etiological subtypes, which are branch atheromatous disease (BAD) and cerebral small vessel disease (CSVD)-related SSI. We applied the Beijing version of the Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA-BJ), the Shape Trail Test (STT), and the Stroop Color and Word Test (SCWT) to investigate the differences in cognitive performance between these two subtypes of SSI. Methods: Patients with acute SSIs were prospectively enrolled. The differences of MoCA-BJ, STT, and SCWT between the BAD group and CSVD-related SSI group were analyzed. A generalized linear model was used to analyze the associations between SSI patients with different etiological mechanisms and cognitive function. We investigated the correlations between MoCA-BJ, STT, and SCWT using Spearman's correlation analysis and established cut-off scores for Shape Trail Test A (STT-A) and STT-B to identify cognitive impairment in patients with SSI. Results: This study enrolled a total of 106 patients, including 49 and 57 patients with BAD and CSVD-related SSI, respectively. The BAD group performances were worse than those of the CSVD-related SSI group for STT-A (83 [60.5-120.0] vs. 68 [49.0-86.5], P = 0.01), STT-B (204 [151.5-294.5] vs. 153 [126.5-212.5], P = 0.015), and the number of correct answers on Stroop-C (46 [41-49] vs. 49 [45-50], P = 0.035). After adjusting for age, years of education, National Institutes of Health Stroke Scale and lesion location, the performance of SSI patients with different etiological mechanisms still differed significantly for STT-A and STT-B. Conclusions: BAD patients were more likely to perform worse than CSVD-related SSI patients in the domains of language, attention, executive function, and memory. The mechanism of cognitive impairment after BAD remains unclear.