Hypertensive patients who develop diabetes mellitus are at higher risk of atrial fibrillation and heart failure
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The authors hypothesized that development of new-onset diabetes mellitus (DM) in hypertensive patients increases the risk of developing atrial fibrillation (AF) and AF-associated heart failure in this high-risk group. The study was aimed to investigate the influence of new-onset diabetes on developing AF in the 15,245 participants of the VALUE trial population of high-risk hypertensive patients. The presence of AF was determined by central analyzed electrocardiograms at baseline, followed by yearly assessments of changes. After adjusting for prespecified covariates, Cox regression analysis revealed that patients with new-onset DM had a significantly higher event rate of new-onset AF and more persistent AF as compared with patients without DM. Moreover, there was a trend toward more AF in patients with DM at baseline. Compared with patients with new-onset DM without AF, patients with new-onset DM and AF exhibited a hazard ratio of 3.56 for heart failure. These study results demonstrate that hypertensive patients who developed DM had more AF than those patients who did not develop DM, which may explain to some extent their concomitant high risk of hospitalisation for heart failure.
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