Family history as a risk factor for recurrent hospitalization for lone atrial fibrillation: a nationwide family study in Sweden

BMC Cardiovascular Disorders

Research Article

Bengt Zöller¹  Henrik Ohlsson¹  Jan Sundquist²  Kristina Sundquist² 

[1] Center for Primary Health Care Research, CRC, Skåne University Hospital, Building 28, Floor 11, Jan Waldenströms gata 35, S-205 02, Malmö, Sweden;Center for Primary Health Care Research, CRC, Skåne University Hospital, Building 28, Floor 11, Jan Waldenströms gata 35, S-205 02, Malmö, Sweden;Stanford Prevention Research Center, Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford, California, USA;

关键词: Atrial fibrillation;    Family history;    Risk factors;    Genetics;   

DOI  :  10.1186/1471-2261-12-121

 received in 2012-07-03, accepted in 2012-11-30,  发布年份 2012

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

BackgroundAlthough the heritability of atrial fibrillation (AF) has been determined, the relevance of family history of AF for the likelihood of recurrent hospitalization for AF is unknown. The aim of this nationwide study was to determine whether family history of AF is a risk factor of recurrent hospitalization for lone AF (LAF), i.e., AF with unknown etiology. The familial risk for first time LAF hospitalization was also determined and compared to the risk of recurrent hospitalization for LAF.MethodsWe examined whether family history of AF is a risk factor for recurrent hospitalization for LAF in the whole Swedish population. We linked Multigeneration Register data on individuals aged 0–60 years to Hospital Discharge Register data for the period 1987–2009 to compare LAF recurrent hospitalization risk among individuals with and without parental or sibling history of AF. We calculated hazard ratios (HRs) to determine the familial HR of recurrent hospitalization for LAF. Odds ratios (OR) were calculated for familial risk of first time LAF hospitalization.ResultsThe risk of recurrent LAF hospitalization was 1.23 (95% CI 1.17-1.30) for individuals with affected parents compared to 1.30 (95% CI 1.22-1.38) for those with affected siblings. After 10 years of follow up 50% of those without and 60% of those with family history had recurrent hospitalization for LAF. The risk of recurrent LAF hospitalization in individuals with two affected parents was 1.65 (95% CI 1.44-1.90). There was an interaction between age and family history, with family history having a weaker effect on LAF hospitalization risk in older age groups. The OR for first time LAF hospitalization was 2.08 (95% CI 2.02-2.15) for offspring with affected parents and 3.23 (95% CI 3.08-3.39) for individuals with affected siblings.ConclusionsFamily history of AF is a novel risk factor for recurrent LAF hospitalization. The higher recurrence hospitalization risk in multiplex families and younger individuals suggests a genetic contribution. However, the familial risk for recurrent LAF hospitalization was much lower than the risk for first time LAF hospitalization, suggesting that familial and possibly genetic factors are more important for first time LAF hospitalization than recurrent LAF hospitalization.

【 授权许可】

Unknown   
© Zoller et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. 2012. This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.