Coffee Consumption and Incidental Tachyarrhythmias

doi: 10.1001 /jamainternmed.2021.3616

Commentary

This study will evaluate the association between the consumption of common caffeine products and the risk of arrhythmia.

It was a prospective cohort study and analyzed longitudinal data from the UK Biobank from January 1, 2006 to December 31, 2018, which included 386,258 individuals.

As a result, 16,979 participants were identified as having an incident arrhythmia during a mean (SD) follow-up of 4.5 (3.1) years.

After adjusting for demographic characteristics, comorbidities, and lifestyle habits, each additional cup of habitual coffee was found to lower the risk of developing an arrhythmia by 3%. In an analysis of each arrhythmia alone, we were able to observe similar statistically significant associations for atrial fibrillation/flutter (HR, 0.97; 95% CI, 0.96-0.98; P <.001) and supraventricular tachycardia (HR, 0.96; 95).

Two different interaction analyses, one of which used a caffeine metabolism-associated polymorphism score of seven genetic polymorphisms and the other restricted to CYP1A2 rs762551 only, revealed no evidence of a change in effect.

A Mendelian randomization study using these same genetic variants found no significant association between the underlying propensity for differences in caffeine metabolism and the risk of incident arrhythmias.

In conclusion, habitual coffee consumption was inversely associated with a lower risk of arrhythmia, and there was no evidence of a genetically mediated effect of caffeine metabolism.