TOPLINE:
Eight psychosocial factors, grouped into two distinct clusters, are significantly associated with risk for atrial fibrillation in postmenopausal women, with insomnia and stressful life events (SLEs) being the most strongly associated with AFib, a large new study has found.
METHODOLOGY:
- In addition to traditional risk factors such as obesity, advanced age, ethnicity, smoking, alcohol, hypertension, diabetes, coronary artery disease, heart failure, and emotional and psychological distress may also affect AFib.
- The study included 83,736 postmenopausal women in the Women’s Health Initiative (mean age, 63.9 years; 88.1% White) who did not have AFib at baseline.
- From questionnaires, researchers collected information on psychosocial stressors and used hierarchical cluster analysis to identify patterns of psychosocial predictors.
- They separated these clusters into quartiles, identified associations between psychosocial exposure variables, and adjusted for traditional risk factors.
- Over an average follow-up of 10.5 years, 23,954 participants (28.6%) developed incident AFib.
TAKEAWAY:
- The analysis generated two clusters of distinct psychosocial variables that were significantly associated with AFib: the Stress Cluster, including SLEs, depressive symptoms, and insomnia; and the Strain Cluster, including three personality traits: optimism, cynical hostility, and emotional expressiveness; and two social measures: social support, and social strain.
- Those in the highest quartiles of both the Stress Cluster and the Strain Cluster had greater rates of AFib, compared with those in the lowest quartiles.
- In a final model, the association between SLEs (hazard ratio, 1.02; 95% confidence interval, 1.01-1.04) and insomnia (HR, 1.04; 95% CI, 1.03-1.06) were most strongly linked to increased incidence of AFib, and a sensitivity analysis using snoring as a surrogate marker for sleep apnea didn’t change this outcome, supporting the independent effect of insomnia on AFib.
- In subgroup analyses, the Stress Cluster had a stronger association with AFib incidence in younger (50-69 years) versus older women (70-79 years), and in non-Hispanic White and Asian women versus Hispanic and non-Hispanic Black women.
IN PRACTICE:
The results support the hypothesis that psychosocial predictors account for additional risk for AFib “above and beyond” traditional risk factors, the authors wrote. Identifying and addressing sex-specific, modifiable risk factors, including insomnia, “may help reduce the burden of AF[ib] in aging women.”
SOURCE:
The study was conducted by Susan X. Zhao, MD, division of cardiology, department of medicine, Santa Clara Valley Medical Center, San Jose, Calif., and colleagues. It was published online in the Journal of the American Heart Association.
LIMITATIONS:
The psychometric questionnaires were administered only at study entry, but psychosocial variables may change over time. Data on sleep apnea and other sleep disorders, which may confound the relationship between insomnia and AFib, were not available, and although the study included a sensitivity analysis controlling for snoring, this is an imperfect surrogate for sleep apnea. Generalizability to other demographic, racial, and ethnic groups is limited.
DISCLOSURES:
The Women’s Health Initiative program is funded by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute; National Institutes of Health; and the Department of Health & Human Services. The authors have no relevant conflicts of interest.
A version of this article appeared on Medscape.com.