Elevated BMI, waist circumference confer AF risk
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Elevated BMI and waist circumference were associated with elevated risk for atrial fibrillation, although the extent varied by sex, according to a study published in the Journal of the American Heart Association.
“This large study describes, with unique reliability, the importance of obesity as a potentially modifiable risk factor for atrial fibrillation: body mass index being a more informative measure of atrial fibrillation risk in women and waist circumference in men,” Michiel H. F. Poorthuis, MD, from the clinical trial service unit and epidemiological studies unit, Nuffield department of population health, University of Oxford, and colleagues wrote.
The researchers included 896,120 participants in a multivariable analysis of the relationship between BMI and AF risk and 205,574 participants in a multivariable analysis of the relationship between waist circumference and AF risk. Among the cohort, 193,140 participants had BMI and waist circumference recorded.
The researchers found a positive association between BMI per 5 kg/m2 increment and risk for AF (OR for men = 1.65; 95% CI, 1.57-1.73, OR for women = 1.36; 95% CI, 1.3-1.42; P for trend = .0001).
In the BMI analysis, absolute risks were higher in men compared with women while the relationship between BMI and AF was stronger in men than women, the researchers wrote.
The researchers also found a positive association between waist circumference per 10 cm increment and AF risk (OR for men = 1.47; 95% CI, 1.36-1.6; OR for women = 1.37; 95% CI, 1.26-1.59; P for trend = .0001).
Abdominal obesity was also linked to higher risk of AF (OR for men = 1.83; 95% CI, 1.56-2.15; OR for women = 1.84; 95% CI, 1.46-2.32) compared with no abdominal obesity, according to the researchers.
For men, waist circumference had stronger improvement of likelihood-ratio chi-square test than BMI (30% vs. 23%), but the reverse was true for women (12% vs. 23%), the researchers wrote.
“The obesity epidemic sweeping across both high- and low/middle-income countries could drive up rates of atrial fibrillation and atrial fibrillation-related strokes, and our findings make public health interventions to avoid weight gain increasingly pressing,” the researchers wrote.
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