Arterial oxygen desaturation during sleep and atrial fibrillation

Atrial fibrillation is a common arrhythmia with associated complications of stroke and other adverse outcomes. We conducted a population-based study of 1763 Japanese men aged 40–74 years to examine the association between the frequency of nocturnal oxygen desaturation, estimated by a pulse oximeter, and the prevalence of atrial fibrillation. We found a significant association between the severity of sleep-disordered breathing (SDB) and the prevalence of atrial fibrillation; the odds ratios (ORs) were 2.47 for those with 5–15 events/h of 3% oxygen desaturation index (ODI) level and 5.66 for those with ⩾15 events/h of 3% ODI level (p for trend = 0.02). Although the association of SDB with atrial fibrillation has been reported in recent clinical studies,1–4 no population-based epidemiological study has examined this relationship. We investigated the association between the frequency of nocturnal oxygen desaturation and the prevalence of atrial fibrillation among community-based subjects. The subjects were 1763 Japanese men aged 40–74 years who lived in three Japanese communities. They participated in the 2000–2004 annual cardiovascular risk surveys and were recruited for the present sleep study, at a …