Development of a Basic Risk Score for Incident Atrial Fibrillation in a Japanese General Population　- The Suita Study

Area of Science:

• Cardiology
• Epidemiology
• Public Health

Background:

• An established atrial fibrillation (AF) risk score for non-Western general populations is lacking.
• Atrial fibrillation poses a significant global health burden.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop and validate a novel risk score for predicting incident atrial fibrillation (AF) in a non-Western general population.
• To create a tool for early identification of individuals at high risk of developing AF.

Main Methods:

• Prospective follow-up of 6,898 participants (30-79 years) initially free of AF for incident AF over 95,180 person-years.
• Development of a scoring system based on age, sex, systolic hypertension, overweight, alcohol consumption, coronary artery disease, smoking, cholesterol, arrhythmia, and cardiac murmur.
• Cox proportional hazard models were used to adjust for cardiovascular risk factors.

Main Results:

• 311 incident AF events were recorded during follow-up.
• The developed risk score demonstrated good predictive ability (C-statistic 0.749).
• Individuals with scores ≤2, 10-11, and ≥16 had 10-year AF probabilities of ≤1%, 9%, and 27%, respectively.

Conclusions:

• A practical 10-year risk score for incident AF was successfully developed for a non-Western general population.
• The score utilizes readily available clinical data, facilitating its use in routine outpatient settings without requiring ECG.
• This risk assessment tool can aid in proactive cardiovascular risk management and early AF detection.