Ethnic Differences in Intracranial Artery Tortuosity: A Possible Reason for Different Locations of Cerebral Atherosclerosis

Abstract

It remains unclear why intracranial artery atherosclerosis (ICAS) is more common in Asians than in Caucasians. Intracranial arterial tortuosity is associated with atherosclerotic plaque, 3 and is greater in stroke patients with ICAS than in those without. Therefore, we hypothesized that arterial tortuosity may be greater in Asians than in Caucasians, and compared the tortuosity between age-/sexmatched Koreans and Caucasians.