Clin Res Cardiol (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00392-022-02002-5

The Gut Microbiome and Atrial Fibrillation in the Community
C. S. Börschel1, J. Palmu2, A. Ortega-Alonso2, L. Marko3, M. Inouye4, P. Jousilahti2, R. Salido5, K. Sanders5, C. Brennan5, G. C. Humphrey5, J. G. Sanders5, F. Gutmann3, D. Linz6, V. Salomaa2, A. S. Havulinna2, S. K. Forslund3, R. Knight5, L. Lahti7, T. Niiranen2, R. Schnabel1, für die Studiengruppe: FINRISK
1Allgemeine und Interventionelle Kardiologie, Universitäres Herz- und Gefäßzentrum Hamburg GmbH, Hamburg; 2Department of Public Health and Welfare, Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare, Helsinki, FI; 3Max Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine, Berlin; 4Department of Public Health and Primary Care, Cambridge University, Cambridge, UK; 5Department of Pediatrics, UC San Diego School of Medicine, La Jolla, US; 6Department of Cardiology, Maastricht UMC+Heart+Vascular Center, Maastricht, NL; 7Department of Future Technologies, University of Turku, Turku;

Aims:
Atrial fibrillation (AF) is an important heart rhythm disorder in aging populations. The gut microbiome composition has been related to cardiovascular disease risk factors and there are hypothetical relations to AF. Whether the gut microbial profile is associated with the risk of AF remains unknown.

Methods:
In the population-based FINRISK 2002 cohort of 6763 individuals, we examined the compositional profile and functional groups of the gut metagenome in relation to prevalence and longterm incidence of AF and qualitatively compared our findings with published gut microbiota associations with other cardiovascular diseases.

Results:
In multivariable-adjusted models, we observed nine microbial genera associated with prevalent AF (N=116) and eight microbial genera associated with incident AF over a median follow-up of 15 years (N=539) with false discovery rate (FDR)-corrected P<0.05 using negative binomial regression. Two of the genera, Enorma (log2-fold change incident AF 0.46, standard error 0.07, FDR-corrected P<0.001) and Bifidobacterium (log2-fold change incident AF 0.37, standard error 0.08, FDR-corrected P<0.001) were associated with prevalent and incident AF. Bacterial diversity measures were not significantly associated with AF. Seventy-five percent of top genera (Enorma, Paraprevotella, Odoribacter, Collinsella, Barnesiella, Alistipes) in our Cox regression analyses showed consistent direction of shifted abundance in an independent AF case-control cohort.

Conclusion:
Associations of the gut microbiome and prevalent and incident AF in a well-established population cohort were modest. Some plausible genera, such as Enorma, which have been previously linked to heart failure, and Bifidobacterium were related to AF. Their potential role in causal pathways and for specific interventions needs to be examined.


https://dgk.org/kongress_programme/jt2022/aP1930.html