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SHORT COMMUNICATION

Chronic small vessel ischemia in Parkinson’s disease patients with and without freezing of gait

Morteza Sanei Taheri1 ,  Mehri Salari2 ,  Saeed Mahaki1* ,  Naser Moradi3 ,  Bahareh Zaker Harofeh2 ,  Negin Yousefi2
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1 Department of Radiology, Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran
2 Department of Neurological Disease, Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran
3 Department of Neuroscience, School of Medicine, Zanjan University of Medical Sciences, Zanjan, Iran
Advanced Neurology, 025190051 https://doi.org/10.36922/AN025190051
Received: 8 May 2025 | Revised: 5 September 2025 | Accepted: 6 November 2025 | Published online: 3 December 2025
© 2025 by the Author(s). This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License ( https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ )
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Abstract

Chronic small vessel ischemia (CSVI) is recognized as a significant factor in the pathophysiology of Parkinson’s disease (PD). This study investigated the relationship between the CSVI in PD patients with and without freezing of gait (FOG). Fifty-eight PD patients without FOG and 25 patients with FOG were enrolled in the study. The assessment of the CSVI was conducted through the Fazekas scale. The results of the Fazekas scale indicated no significant correlation among PD patients in terms of age, sex, and disease duration. In contrast, the findings for patients with FOG revealed a statistically significant correlation. Specifically, as the severity of FOG increased, the scores for CSVI decreased. Conversely, patients with lower FOG severity presented higher scores on the Fazekas scale. An increase in the CSVI among PD patients without FOG was not associated with age, sex, or disease duration. Furthermore, we concluded that the increase in CSVI is not correlated with the high intensity of FOG in these patients.

Keywords
Parkinson’s disease
Freezing of gait
Chronic small vessel ischemia
Funding
None.
Conflict of interest
The authors declare that they have no competing interests.
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Advanced Neurology, Electronic ISSN: 2810-9619 Print ISSN: 3060-8589, Published by AccScience Publishing
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