The use of non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) and risk of atrial fibrillation

Atrial fibrillation is a common cardiac arrhythmia that has many risk factors including some medications; however, the effect of non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) and its risk is not well assessed. This study was conducted to find out if there is an association between the use of non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs and risk of atrial fibrillation. The study was conducted at Al-Hussein Medical City Hospital in Karbala-Iraq as a retrospective case-control study between September 2014 and March 2015; including 90 patients with atrial fibrillation and 90 control subjects who were age and sex matched, and based on risk-set sampling. Current use of NSAID was started within one month and chronic use for more than one month was recorded. The current use of NSAIDs by patients with atrial fibrillation was found in 43 patients out of 90 (47.7%) of which new users were 29 (32.2%) and chronic users were 14 (15.5%), while it was found in 27 out of 90 (30%) of the control subjects who were current users of NSAIDs. That difference was statistically significant (p-value was 0.015), the odds ratio (OR) was 2.135 and 95% confidence intervals (CI) was 1.16-3.94. This study suggests that the current use of NSAIDs might be associated with increased risk of incidence of atrial fibrillation.