Background and aim: Atrial fibrillation (AF) is the most common sustained cardiac arrhythmia encountered in clinical practice. The REDISCOVER (Responding to Increasing Cardiovascular disease prevalence) study is an observational longitudinal community-based study that tracks changing lifestyles, risk factors and chronic disease in urban and rural areas of Malaysia. In this study, we aim to study the prevalence of AF and its associated risk factors.
Methods: The study was conducted between 2007 and 2014. Participants were required to complete questionnaires on cardiovascular risk factors and medical history, and undergo physical examinations, blood tests, ECG and echocardiography examinations. Demographic variables including weight, height, blood pressure, serum glucose and serum lipid were recorded. Participants with AF were identified from their baseline ECG and at 3-year follow up.
Results: A total of 10 805 subjects participated in the study. Mean age was 52.6(±11.6) years and 56% were female; 4.4% of subjects had a diagnosis of ischaemic heart disease, 1.3% had a previous stroke, 16.7% had diabetes mellitus and 45.6% had hypertension. There were 53 subjects diagnosed with AF at baseline, giving a prevalence of 0.49%, and 0.54% at 3 years. AF was more prevalent in males (58.5% in the AF group compared to 43.9% in sinus rhythm (SR) subjects; p=0.03) and the older age group. Ischaemic heart disease was more prevalent in AF subjects (22.6%) compared to SR subjects (4.4%) (p<0.001). In the AF group previous stroke had occurred in 1.9% of subjects compared to 1.3% in the SR population (p=0.51), and 24.5% of subjects in the AF group had diabetes compared to 16.6% in the SR group (p=0.12). There was a significant difference in the prevalence of hypertension between the AF group (59.6%) compared to the SR subjects (45.5%) (p=0.04).
Conclusions: The prevalence of AF in the Malaysian population was low at 0.54% compared to the global average of 1%. We found that AF was associated with older age, male sex, hypertension, and ischaemic heart disease.