Clinical InvestigationElectrophysiologyIncidence of atrial fibrillation in whites and African-Americans: The Atherosclerosis Risk in Communities (ARIC) study
Section snippets
Study population
The Atherosclerosis Risk in Communities (ARIC) study is a population-based prospective study of cardiovascular disease in a cohort of 15,792 participants, 45 to 64 years of age at enrollment (55% women, 27% African American). Participants were sampled from 4 US communities (mostly whites from suburbs of Minneapolis, Minnesota, and Washington County, Maryland; African-Americans from Jackson, Mississippi; and whites and African-Americans from Forsyth County, North Carolina) during the period 1987
Results
Of 15,792 ARIC participants, 15,444 met eligibility criteria. At the baseline examination, 37 (0.2%) of them had AF in their ECG. Therefore, these individuals were excluded from the incidence calculations. Selected baseline characteristics of the study sample are shown in Table I. Prevalence of cardiovascular risk factors, such as hypertension, diabetes, left ventricular hypertrophy, body mass index, and smoking was higher in African-Americans than whites. From 1987 to 2004, during 228,976
Discussion
In this analysis of the ARIC cohort, we show that incidence of AF is higher in whites than in African-Americans despite risk factors for AF being more prevalent in the latter group. Incidence rates of AF among whites in the ARIC study were comparable to those obtained in other population-based studies conducted in the United States.4, 6, 7 Consistent with previous publications, AF rates increased exponentially with age and were higher in men than women. Finally, we estimated the cumulative risk
Acknowledgements
We thank the ARIC participants, staff, and investigators for their long-term contributions to ARIC.
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