CADASIL: Genetic Stroke Disorder

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CADASIL is the most common type of hereditary stroke disorder. CADASIL is an abbreviation that stands for Cerebral Autosomal-Dominant Arteriopathy with Subcortical Infarcts and Leukoencephalopathy. It belongs to the disorder family called Leukodystrophies. It was discovered in 1955 by Ludo van Bogaert. It occurs by the thickening of blood vessel walls which blocks off blood flow to the brain.

There are many symptoms of the disease, but you will only get so many of them depending on your age. The disease’s symptoms range from a migraine all the way to quite severe strokes, pseudo bulbar palsy and subcortical dementia depending on how long you have been dealing with it. Signs of the disease may be waves of random migraines, strokes or mood disorders between 35-55 years old. Below is an image showing age widths of when you can experience certain symptoms.
Symptoms are slow to progress though and usually by the mid 60’s people affected by it experience dementia and cognitive issues. The most common sign of CADASIL is an ischemic stroke with about 85% of people who experience the symptoms developing these strokes …show more content…

To add to this it is also a degenerative disease so the person knows that most likely it will just get worse as time goes on and this can be quite daunting. Friends and family will also have to accept this, but at the same time will have to be supportive to the affected person to create a positive environment and this is a big challenge in itself. With CADASIL being a genetically inherited disease there will always be a chance of passing it on to offspring if an affected person were to reproduce. This is a very big decision for the patient if they wanted to have a child as no parent would want their child to go through the physical and mental pains of CADASIL, but on the other hand the child may not inherit

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