Dementia pathology is strongly associated with mitochondrial production of reactive oxidative species (ROS), and in our AD + CVD samples we detected up-regulation of the dismutase protein superoxide dismutase-1 as well as down-regulation of aldehyde dehydrogenase and mitochondrial creatine kinase-U-type relative to controls (Fig. 5, Additional file 2: Table S2). Here, SOD1 is linked to dementia.