Clinical and neuroimaging disparity between Chinese and German patients with cerebral small vessel disease: a comparative study

Ethnic disparity of cerebral small vessel disease (CSVD) has been reported previously but understanding of its clinical-anatomical is sparse. Two cohorts of CSVD patients from Peking University First Hospital, China and University Hospital of Ulm, Germany were retrospectively collected between 2013 and 2017. Visual rating scales and semiautomatic computer-assisted quantitative analysis were used to describe the neuroimaging features of CSVD, including lacunes, enlarged perivascular spaces, white matter changes and microbleeds. After exclusion of confounding neurological disorders, 165 out of 220 Chinese and 86 out of 98 German patients’ data were analyzed. Mean age of patients was 64.0 ± 11.9 years in China and 73.9 ± 10.3 years in Germany. Cognitive deficits were more prominent in the German group, mainly in the cognitive domains of language and delayed recall. Neuroimaging comparison showed that lacunes were more common and white matter lesion load was more severe in German than Chinese patients. Spatial distribution analysis suggested that Chinese patients showed more deep and infratentorial lesions (microbleeds and lacunes), while lesions in German patients were more frequently located in the lobes or subcortical white matter. In conclusion, different age of onset and anatomical distribution of lesions exist between Chinese and German CSVD patients in the observed population.