Interesting study. Seems that atrial fibrillation is associated with Type 1 Diabetes, and indirectly linked with A1C but only if people sustained end organ damage
http://medicaleconomics.modernmedicine.com/medical-economics/news/exploring-link-between-atrial-fibrillation-and-type-1-diabetes
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That was really interesting.
What I noted was that their marker for end organ damage was a threshold number for micro-albuminaria. So they really are finding a link btw T1Ds with kidney damage and AF—I think.
my guess is it really has to do with how well the body can prevent damage to the nerves and blood vessels, and that these two underlying problems are connected. We don’t have great measures for nerve damage throughout the body but that’s my guess.
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AF can be a real pain to treat as well, and is quite common in that 4-5% of the population has it in their 60’s and 10% of the population has it by their 80’s.
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Do you know of research that shows they are connected? There must be some covariance since diabetes causes both on high percentages, but I am not sure there is a causal relationship btw the two. I always assumed they were independent.
In the current model of atrial arrhythmia, you have to have a substrate and a trigger. In the case of AF, the trigger is electrical and I am guessing diabetes doesn’t have much affect on that, so what can be surmised is that perhaps the damage caused by high glucose causes the heart to change in a way the promotes a substrate that leads to AF at a higher rate than the general population.
In addition, there is a fair amount of AF that originates in the pulmonary veins, so it would be interesting to see if the type of AF diabetics encounter has its origination foci in the veins as opposed to the heart muscle itself.
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