Relation of Pericardial Fat Intrathoracic Fat and Abdominal Visceral Fat with Incident Atrial Fibrillation (From the Framingham Heart Study)

摘要

Obesity is associated with increased risk of developing atrial fibrillation (AF). Different fat depots may have differential associations with cardiac pathology. We examined the longitudinal associations between pericardial, intrathoracic, and visceral fat with incident AF. We studied Framingham Heart Study Offspring and Third Generation Cohorts who participated in the multi-detector computed tomography sub-study examination 1. We constructed multivariable-adjusted Cox proportional hazard models for risk of incident AF. Body mass index (BMI) was included in the multivariable-adjusted model as a secondary adjustment. We included 2,135 participants (53.3% women; mean age 58.8 years). During a median follow-up of 9.7 years, we identified 162 cases of incident AF. Across the increasing tertiles of pericardial fat volume, age- and sex-adjusted incident AF rate per 1000 person-years of follow-up were 8.4, 7.5, and 10.2. Based on an age- and sex-adjusted model, greater pericardial fat [hazard ratio (HR) 1.17, 95% confidence interval (CI) 1.03-1.34] and intrathoracic fat (HR 1.24, 95% CI 1.06-1.45) were associated with increased risk of incident AF. The HRs (95% CI) for incident AF were 1.13 (0.99-1.30) for pericardial fat, 1.19 (1.01-1.40) for intrathoracic fat, and 1.09 (0.93-1.28) for abdominal visceral fat after multivariable adjustment. After additional adjustment of BMI, none of the associations remained significant (all p>0.05). Our findings suggest that cardiac ectopic fat depots may share common risk factors with AF, which may have led to a lack of independence in the association between pericardial fat with incident AF.