Table 1.

Demographic and clinical characteristics of the study participants according to the presence of DELC.

	CN (N = 243)			Cognitively impaired (N = 471)
	No DELC	DELC	P-value	No DELC	DELC	P-value
Total, N	136 (56.0%)	107 (44.0%)		192 (40.8%)	279 (59.2%)
Age, years	69.4 (6.8)	72.6 (6.9)	<0.001	71.4 (9.2)	74.0 (7.6)	0.001
Male	32 (23.5%)	36 (33.6%)	0.081	72 (37.5%)	120 (43.0%)	0.232
Education, years	10.7 (4.7)	9.9 (5.2)	0.198	11.2 (5.1)	10.4 (5.6)	0.155
APOE genotype†
APOE ε2 present	18 (14.6%)	14 (14.9%)	0.957	14 (8.1%)	27 (9.9%)	0.530
APOE ε4 present	20 (16.3%)	18 (19.1%)	0.579	72 (41.6%)	101 (36.9%)	0.315
MMSE	28.3 (2.1)	28.2 (1.8)	0.810	23.2 (5.4)	22.4 (5.4)	0.129
CVD risk factors
Hypertension	59 (43.4%)	54 (50.5%)	0.272	99 (51.6%)	176 (63.1%)	0.013
DM	18 (13.2%)	27 (25.2%)	0.017	49 (25.5%)	56 (20.1%)	0.163
Hyperlipidemia	52 (38.2%)	33 (30.8%)	0.230	70 (36.5%)	83 (29.7%)	0.127
History of IHD	12 (8.8%)	18 (16.8%)	0.060	20 (10.4%)	33 (11.8%)	0.634
History of stroke	3 (2.2%)	5 (4.7%)	0.306	9 (4.7%)	31 (11.1%)	0.014
Imaging biomarkers
Moderate to severe WMH	34 (25.0%)	32 (29.9%)		84 (43.8%)	193 (69.2%)
Aβ-positivity††	—	—		99 (51.6%)	165 (59.1%)

^† APOE genotyping was performed in 664 (93.0%) of the 714 participants in this study.

^††Aβ PET was performed in cognitively impaired patients (N = 471) in this study.

Statistical analyses were performed with Chi-square, Fisher’s exact or Student’s t-tests.

Abbreviations: N = number; SD = standard deviation; DELC = diagonal earlobe crease; CN = cognitively normal; APOE = apolipoprotein E; MMSE = mini-mental state examination; CVD = cardiovascular disease; DM = diabetes mellitus; IHD = ischemic heart disease; WMH = white matter hyperintensities; Aβ = amyloid-beta.

Values are mean (SD) or N (%).