Genetic Interplay Between White Matter Hyperintensities and Alzheimer’s Disease: A Brain-Body Perspective

MRI-detected white matter hyperintensities (WMH) are often recognized as markers of cerebrovascular abnormalities and an index of vascular brain injury, and are frequently present in individuals with Alzheimer’s disease (AD). Given the emerging bidirectional communication between the brain-body axis in both WMHs and AD, it is important to understand their genetic underpinnings across the whole body. However, literature on this is scarce.

We investigated the brain-body axis by breaking down heritability estimates of these phenotypes across the whole body, – i.e., partitioning heritability. Our aims were to identify genetic underpinnings specific to WMHs, and common between WMHs and AD, by assessing (a) the partitioned heritability of WMHs and AD across the brain-body axis with tissue-specific annotations, (b) the partitioned heritability of WMHs and AD across the brain-body axis with cell-specific annotations, and (c) the genes associated with WMHs and AD, and verifying their expression levels across the whole body.

Our tissue-specific analysis revealed that WMH-associated SNPs were significantly enriched in tissues beyond the brain, namely liver, cardiovascular, and kidney – with liver being a common tissue enriched for both WMHs and AD. Our cell-specific analysis showed enrichment of vascular endothelial cells across the tissue types enriched for WMHs, highlighting their central role in the development of WMHs. Additionally, our gene-level analysis highlighted overlapping patterns of tissue enrichment for both WMHs and AD, and showed interactions between WMH and AD associated genes.

Our findings provide new insights into the systemic influences potentially contributing to WMH pathology, in particular, multi-system endothelial disorder. We hope that our multisystemic genetic findings will stimulate future WMH-research into specific pathways across the brain-body axis.