Table 1 Indicators of systemic inflammation and incident arrhythmia risk—observational study summary

Gender

46.75% male

Mean age

40–69 years

Study design

Observational study

Study period

2006–2010

Study population

478,524 participants from the UK Biobank cohort

Statistical percentage of developing arrhythmias

About 1 in 50 Americans under 65 and 1 in 10 Americans over 65 suffer from atrial fibrillation. Ventricular arrhythmias vary greatly in frequency. Ventricular arrhythmias affected 48 out of 100,000 individuals in one research, or around 1 in 2,100 persons. Ventricular arrhythmias affect 2–3 out of 100 older persons without known risk factors and 15–16 out of 100 adults with coronary artery disease

Hazard ratio

The likelihood of an incident in a treatment group compared to the probability in the control group over a given period of time is called the hazard ratio, or HR. For time-to-event data, this ratio serves as a metric of impact magnitude

Follow-up duration

32,877 patients had arrhythmias throughout a mean follow-up of 12.2 years; these included 10,527 episodes of bradyarrhythmia, 24,484 cases of VA, and 3789 occurrences of AF

Key findings

Following adjustment for possible confounders, the risk of different arrhythmias was shown to be positively correlated with CRP levels; the risk was found to be negatively correlated with neutrophil count, monocyte count, and NLR; the risk was found to be U-shaped with lymphocyte count, SII, PLR, and LMR. The greatest correlation with markers of systemic inflammation was shown in VA, then AF, and bradyarrhythmia

Conclusions

The development of AF, VA, and bradyarrhythmia was strongly correlated with a number of systemic inflammatory markers, the latter two of which have not received much attention. More randomized controlled trials are required; however, active systemic inflammation treatment may be beneficial in lowering the burden of arrhythmias