Prediabetes independently associated with higher risk of atrial fibrillation

A new study by Jung-Chi Hsu and team suggests that prediabetes stage can increase risk of atrial fibrillation (AF). The findings of this study were published in BMC Cardiovascular Diabetology. 

The glycemic continuum frequently depicts a steady decrease in insulin sensitivity, which leads to a rise in glucose levels. Although prediabetes is a known risk factor for both macrovascular and microvascular illnesses, whether prediabetes is independently linked with the chance of developing atrial fibrillation (AF), specifically the onset time, has not been thoroughly investigated utilizing a high-quality study design in conjunction with statistical machine-learning methods.

A retrospective cohort research was conducted with 174,835 adult patients between 2014 and 2019 to evaluate the link between prediabetes and AF using data from electronic medical records gathered from the National Taiwan University Hospital, a tertiary medical institution in Taiwan. A propensity-score matching strategy was utilized to choose matched pairs of two groups with a 1:1 ratio to make patients with prediabetes comparable to those with normal glucose tests. The log-rank test was performed to examine the cumulative risk of AF between prediabetes and normal glucose tests using the Kaplan-Meier technique. By stratifying three levels of glycosylated hemoglobin, the multivariable Cox regression model was used to assess the adjusted hazard ratio (HR) for prediabetes vs normal glucose test (HbA1c).