Abstract
Background and Aims
Data from the UK Renal Registry (UKRR) has shown that 0.5% of those in the UK with kidney failure are of Chinese ethnicity. The UK Chinese population is growing. Ethnic differences in cause of renal disease and dialysis rates have been described in UK individuals of White, South Asian, and Black ethnicity. However, the clinical demographics of the UK Chinese population with renal disease have not previously been investigated.
The China Kidney Disease Network and the Hong Kong Renal Registry have reported the main cause of chronic kidney disease in their populations is diabetes, but the causes of renal disease in other Chinese diaspora have not been well described.
We investigated the clinical characteristics of the UK Chinese population on renal replacement therapy (RRT) as compared with the UK White RRT population in this UKRR analysis.
Method
Data on all adult patients >=18 years who started RRT between 1/1/97 and 31/12/16 were extracted from the UKRR. Patients with ethnicity recorded as anything other than “Chinese” or “White” were excluded from analysis. Patients with ethnicity data missing were also excluded.
Socioeconomic status was measured using country-specific Index of Multiple Deprivation (IMD) quintiles derived from patients’ postcodes (1= most deprived, 5= least deprived). The Chi-square (*) and Mann-Whitney U (**) tests were used to compare baseline characteristics between Chinese and White ethnic groups.
Results
The dataset comprised of 92,857 incident RRT patients, of which 0.5% (n=501) were of Chinese ethnicity and 76% (n=70,575) were White. Clinical characteristics of the UK Chinese population as compared to the UK White population are presented in Table 1.
UK Chinese patients were younger at start of RRT than white patients (61.4 years vs 65.6 years, p<0.001**). Any difference in the proportion of male patients (60.7% vs 63.0%, p=0.29*) or socioeconomic status (p=0.75*) between the two groups was consistent with chance.
There were marked differences in the causes of renal disease: UK Chinese patients had more diabetic renal disease (29% versus 20%, p<0.001*) and glomerulonephritis that white patients (21% vs 13%, p<0.001*) There was modest evidence that more UK Chinese patients started RRT on peritoneal dialysis (PD) compared to the White population (26% vs 23%, p=0.01*)
Conclusion
We found evidence that the UK Chinese RRT population differs from the UK White RRT population. To our knowledge, this is the first study describing renal disease in the UK Chinese population, and one of the first to describe disease in the Chinese diaspora.
Our finding of a greater burden of diabetes in the UK Chinese RRT population compared to the White RRT population may reflect the high prevalence of diabetes in the UK Chinese, as in mainland China and Hong Kong. Further investigation is needed to understand the causes behind the higher burden of glomerulonephritis in the UK Chinese population.
The increased rates of PD in UK Chinese patients may be associated with lower average Body Mass Index (BMI) in the Chinese population. The quantity of missing BMI data in the UKRR dataset prevented investigation of this association. Hong Kong has had a successful “PD first” policy for >30 years. Familiarity with this as a mode of dialysis may have led to higher rates of PD in the UK Chinese population. Studies from Hong Kong have also suggested that lower dialysis volumes are required for Chinese PD patients, and that high transporter status is less common in their population. It would be beneficial to elucidate whether this is also the case in UK Chinese patients.
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