Atrial fibrillation and coronavirus infection

Abstract

Funding AcknowledgementsType of funding sources: Public Institution(s). Main funding source(s): NSC M.D Strazhesko Institute of CardiologyCoronavirus infection (CI) needs to be specified in terms of the impact on the development of first-onset arrhythmia episodes and the worsening of the course of pre-existing arrhythmias and conduction disturbances.The aim of our study was to examine the features of the most common and potentially dangerous arrhythmia - atrial fibrillation (AF) in patients with COVID-19 infection (CI).Research methods in this fragment of work the estimation of clinical and anamnestic characteristics of patients (pts) and a course of a disease is resulted.ResultsWe studied 29 pts, including 9 men and 20 women, aged 65.7 + 1.8 years, who 3.8 + 0.6 months ago underwent CI, and were admitted to our clinic with a diagnosis of atrial fibrillation ( AF): 18 pts with paroxysmal, 8 pts with persistent and three people with permanent forms of this arrhythmia. Of these, 18 (62.1%) had AF before COVID-19 (study group 1), and 11 (37.9%) pts had this arrhythmia after CI (study group 2). In pts of the 1st group after CI there was an increased duration of AF paroxysm in all 15 pts with paroxysmal and persistent forms of AF from 1.9 + 0.4 to 59.1 + 2.0 days (p (0.001). In favor of the latter is the fact that in these patients the frequency of arrhythmia paroxysms increased from 2.5 + 0.4 times a year to 53.6 + 1.9 during the same time (up to almost once a week) (p <0.001). In addition, all three pts with persistent AF had a transition from "normosystolic" form of this arrhythmia to "tachysystolic" (100%, p <0,05). Pts of the 1st group more often had coronary heart disease (77.8% vs. 72.7%, p <0.05), a history of myocardial infarction 5.6% vs. 0%, p <0.05), stroke (11.1% vs. 0%, p <0.05), diabetes mellitus (22.2% vs. 0%, p <0.05). Pts in group 1 were older than patients in group 2 (67.7 + 1.9 years versus 63.9 + 2.4 years) (p <0.001). AF in group 1 first appeared on average 6.1 + 0.6 years before the survey, which is significantly greater than the difference in human age of 3.8 +1.9 years (p <0.001) between pts of the 1st and 2nd groups. That is, AF in pts of the 2nd group of CI dishonestly accelerated its development. Finally, the 1st group of women there were 61.1%, which is more than men, which was 38.9% 1.6 times, and in the 2nd group the number of women increased significantly ( and amounted to 81.8% to 18.2% of men), and the ratio of women to men increased to 4.5 - almost three times more than in the group of pts with AF to CI (p <0.001).ConclusionsCoronavirus infection significantly worsens the course of all forms of atrial fibrillation. COVID-19 increases the likelihood of newly registered atrial fibrillation in pts without significant comorbid and age-related "load". The probability of atrial fibrillation after coronavirus infection in women is higher than in men.