Association between hypertension and neurovascular inflammation in both normal-appearing white matter and white matter hyperintensities

Table 3 Neurovascular inflammation by severity of WMH

	Mild burden mean ± SD	Moderate to severe burden mean ± SD	p value ^a Moderate to severe vs mild WMH
Microglia (IBA1)
Frequency (#/mm²) ^b	267.1 ± 175.6	364.8 ± 239.4	p = 0.145
Area (%)	1.8 ± 1.5	3.1 ± 2.4	p = 0.047 *
Intensity (%)	32.9 ± 2.2	34.8 ± 2.9	p = 0.007 **
Average length (µm)	20.8 ± 4.6	21.9 ± 5.1	p = 0.065
Circularity [0–1]	0.43 ± 0.06	0.46 ± 0.07	p = 0.352
Astroglia (GFAP)
Area (%)	61.4 ± 23.2	59.2 ± 22.6	p = 0.741
Intensity (%)	33.6 ± 7.8	32.2 ± 7.5	p = 0.835
Perivascular inflammation
Perivascular inflammation present (%)	98.4 ± 4.8	97.6 ± 4.3	p = 0.591
Mild (%)	19.6 ± 28.7	21.0 ± 22.4	p = 0.403
Moderate (%)	59.8 ± 21.4	57.4 ± 19.1	p = 0.688
Severe (%)	20.7 ± 18.2	21.7 ± 24.1	p = 0.736
Presence of close-range perivascular inflammation (%)	20.4 ± 17.9	22.2 ± 24.7	p = 0.956

GFAP glial fibrillary acidic protein, IBA1 ionized calcium-binding adaptor molecule 1, SD standard deviation, WMH white matter hyperintensity. *p < 0.05; **p < 0.01
^a p values represent values after Bonferroni correction
^b Frequency describes the number of microglial cells per mm²

ISSN: 2051-5960