New Delhi, Sep 20 : Vascular dementia -- cognitive impairment caused by disease in the brain's small blood vessels -- is a widespread problem, but it has not been as thoroughly studied as Alzheimer's disease, in which abnormal plaques and protein tangles are deposited in neural tissue, according to researchers.

The team at the University of New Mexico developed a new model for characterising and categorising different forms of vascular dementia to better understand the various forms of the disease and find effective treatments.

Conditions like hypertension, atherosclerosis, and diabetes have been linked to vascular dementia, but other contributing causes, including the recent discovery of significant quantities of nano -- and microplastics in human brains, remain poorly understood, said Elaine Bearer, Professor at the varsity.

"We have been flying blind. The various vascular pathologies have not been comprehensively defined, so we haven't known what we're treating. And we didn't know that nano -- and microplastics were in the picture, because we couldn't see them," she added.

In the study, published in the American Journal of Pathology, Bearer and team identified 10 different disease processes that contribute to vascular-based brain injury, typically by causing oxygen or nutrient deficiency, leakage of blood serum, and inflammation or decreased waste elimination. These cause tiny strokes that harm neurons.

She listed new and existing experimental techniques, including special stains and novel microscopy, to detect them.

Meanwhile, a fresh area of concern is the unknown health consequences of nano-and microplastics in the brain, Bearer said.

"Nanoplastics in the brain represent a new player on the field of brain pathology," she said.

"All our current thinking about Alzheimer's disease and other dementias needs to be revised in light of this discovery."

"What I'm finding is that there's a lot more plastic in demented people than in normal subjects," she said. "It seems to correlate with the degree and type of dementia."

The quantity of plastics was also associated with higher levels of inflammation, she said.

/IANS