Bridging the pathophysiology of Alzheimer's disease with vascular pathology: the feed-back, the feed-forward, and oxidative stress.

Alzheimer's disease (AD) is slowly but steadily undergoing a profound reshaping of the definition and approach caused by the frustrating gap between poorly controlled AD epidemiology and repeated lack of success in finding a cure. The frequently reported and currently accepted role of vascular pathology and vascular risk factors in AD pathophysiology in recent years is one major aspect of this need for a severe adjustment in the modus operandi in AD. A clue into the importance that the interdependence between AD and vascularity has gained in scientific opinion is the large amount of recent reviews, almost reaching that of original papers, on the topic. Far from aiming to meta-analyze all in vitro, in vivo, and ex vivo experiments, animal model research, clinical investigations, and epidemiological surveys conducted so far on the vascular disease-AD axis, this work focus on selected aspects of it in the hope of identifying possible study designs to be applied to the vascular AD patient. Looking over the literature on AD-related vascular pathology, the need also emerges to find the right location of oxidative stress.