Mortality risk attributable to atrial fibrillation in middle-aged and elderly people in the Japanese general population: nineteen-year follow-up in NIPPON DATA80.
BACKGROUND
The extent to which atrial fibrillation (AF) contributes to mortality in the Japanese general population has not been clarified.


RESULTS
A randomly sampled general population from all over Japan (4,154 men, 5,329 women; age > or =30 years) was enrolled. Single electrocardiogram recordings were taken in the baseline survey. Stroke death, cardiovascular deaths and all-cause deaths during the subsequent 19 years were analyzed by the presence of AF at baseline. Cox's regression analysis was carried out to estimate the hazard ratios (HRs) of each cause of death attributable to AF after adjusting for other risk factors. Prevalence of AF was 0.64% in the study. The observed person-years were 162,980 among persons without AF and 699 among persons with AF. There were 1,919 deaths. Multivariate adjusted HRs for stroke death, cardiovascular death and all-cause death were 2.69, 2.76 and 1.88, respectively (p<0.05). These HRs were 14.7, 9.63 and 4.00 among persons aged 64 years or younger (p<0.05).


CONCLUSIONS
AF affects stroke mortality, cardiovascular mortality and all-cause mortality in the Japanese general population. Careful attention should be paid to persons with AF in order to prevent future cardiovascular events.
Ohsawa
Masaki
M
Department of Hygiene and Preventive Medicine, School of Medicine, Iwate Medical University, 19-1 Uchimaru, Morioka 020-8505, Japan. masakio@iwate-med.ac.jp
Okayama
Akira
A
Okamura
Tomonori
T
Itai
Kazuyoshi
K
Nakamura
Motoyuki
M
Tanno
Kozo
K
Kato
Karen
K
Yaegashi
Yumi
Y
Onoda
Toshiyuki
T
Sakata
Kiyomi
K
Ueshima
Hirotsugu
H
D000328:Adult; D000367:Age Factors; D000368:Aged; D044466:Asian People; D001281:Atrial Fibrillation / Q000150:complications / Q000401:mortality* / Q000503:physiopathology; D004562:Electrocardiography; D005260:Female; D005500:Follow-Up Studies; D006801:Humans; D007564:Japan; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D012307:Risk Factors; D020521:Stroke / Q000209:etiology / Q000401:mortality / Q000503:physiopathology; D013997:Time Factors