Association between Serum Alkaline Phosphatase Level and Cerebral Small Vessel Disease

Serum alkaline phosphatase (ALP) is a marker of vascular calcification. A high serum ALP level is associated with an increase in cardiovascular events, and predicts poor functional outcome in patients with stroke. We investigated whether serum ALP was associated with cerebral small vessel disease (cSVD) and large cerebral artery stenosis (LCAS).We evaluated vascular risk factors, brain magnetic resonance images (MRIs), and MR angiograms from 1,011 neurologically healthy participants. The presence of silent lacunar infarction (SLI) and moderate-to-severe cerebral white matter hyperintensities (MS-cWMH) were evaluated as indices of cSVD on brain MRIs. Findings of extracranial arterial stenosis (ECAS) or intracranial arterial stenosis (ICAS) were considered to be indices of LCAS on MR angiograms. = 0.025) were added to the model. There were no differences in the proportions of patients with LCAS, ICAS, and ECAS across the serum ALP tertiles.Our study of neurologically healthy participants found a positive association between serum ALP level and indicators of cSVD, but no association between serum ALP level and the indicators of LCAS