Adipose tissue content of saturated fatty acids and atrial fibrillation: A case-cohort study.

Abstract

The aim of this study was to investigate the association between adipose tissue content of total saturated fatty acids including myristic (C14:0), palmitic (C16:0) and stearic (C18:0) acid, as a measure of exposure to saturated fatty acids and the risk of incident atrial fibrillation. A total of 57053 Danish men and women aged 50-64years participating in the Diet, Cancer and Health cohort had an adipose tissue biopsy taken at baseline, and this was analysed for saturated fatty acids content by gas chromatography. Follow-up was registry based and in this case-cohort study we used all cases and a randomly drawn subcohort of 3500 participants representative for the entire cohort. Data were analysed using weighted Cox proportional hazards regression. During a median follow-up of 14.6years, a total of 4722 cases of incident atrial fibrillation were diagnosed. For both men and women, no association between adipose tissue content of total saturated fatty acids and the risk of atrial fibrillation could be demonstrated. We did not find an association between adipose tissue content of total saturated fatty acids and the risk of incident atrial fibrillation.