Lower number of modifiable risk factors was associated with reduced atrial fibrillation incidence in an 18-year prospective cohort study

Prevention strategies for atrial fibrillation (AF) are lacking. This study aimed to identify modifiable risk factors (MRFs) and estimate their impact on AF in the midlife general population. We assessed 9049 participants who were free of prevalent AF at baseline from the Korean Genome and Epidemiology Study. Cox models with time-varying assessment of risk factors were used to identify significant MRFs for incident AF. The MRF burden was defined as the proportion of visits with MRFs during follow-up. Over a median follow-up of 13.1 years, 182 (2.01%) participants developed AF. Three MRFs, including systolic blood pressure (SBP) ≥ 140 mmHg, obesity with central obesity, and an inactive lifestyle were significantly associated with incident AF. Among participants with 3, 2, 1, and 0 MRFs at baseline, 16 (3.9%), 51 (2.5%), 90 (1.8%) and 25 (1.5%) had incident AF, respectively. Compared to participants with three MRFs, those with one or no MRFs had a decreased risk of AF (hazard ratio [95% CI] for one MRF, 0.483 [0.256–0.914]; and for no MRF, 0.291 [0.145–0.583]). A decreasing MRF burden was associated with reduced AF risk (hazard ratio [95% CI] per 10% decrease in burden for SBP ≥ 140 mmHg, 0.937 [0.880–0.997]; for obesity with central obesity, 0.942 [0.907–0.978]; for inactivity, 0.926 [0.882–0.973]). Maintaining or achieving MRF ≤ 1 was associated with decreased AF risk, suggesting that minimizing the burden of MRF might help prevent AF.