Cerebral vasculitis Cerebral vasculitis Cerebral vasculitis or central nervous system vasculitis (sometimes the word angiitis is used instead of "vasculitis") is vasculitis (inflammation of the blood vessel wall) involving the brain and occasionally the spinal cord. It affects all of the vessels: very small blood vessels (capillaries), medium-size blood vessels (arterioles and venules), or large blood vessels (arteries and veins). If blood flow in a vessel with vasculitis is reduced or stopped, the parts of the body that receive blood from that vessel begins to die. It may produce a wide range of neurological symptoms, such as headache, skin rashes, feeling very
Striate arteries They may either rupture, producing an intracerebral hemorrhage that is initially centered in the region they supply, or they become occluded, producing a lacunar infarct in the tissue they supply. The lenticulostriate arteries are "end arteries", meaning that the regions they supply do not have significant collateral blood supply. Occlusion of these vessels therefore leads to stereotyped stroke syndromes. In the case of the lenticulostriate vessels, hemorrhage may remain localized to the putamen and caudate nucleus, may involve neighboring structures such as the internal capsule and other more distant white matter of the hemisphere, or may even rupture into the