Salt as a Trigger for Atrial Tachycardia/Fibrillation
ORCID
Goddard: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2617-7141
MSU Affiliation
College of Agriculture and Life Sciences; Department of Biochemistry, Molecular Biology, Entomology and Plant Pathology
Creation Date
2026-10-30
Abstract
A variety of potential triggers of atrial fibrillation (AF) have been reported, including alcohol consumption, caffeine, exercise, and stress. Vagal AF triggers include gastrointestinal factors such as the amount of food consumed, types of foods, and gas and bloating. In this case report, detailed data of seven dietary and behavioral factors (many vagal) believed to be possible atrial tachycardia (AT) or AF triggers in a single patient with paroxysmal AT/AF were recorded. Episodes of AT and AF were recorded in the patient using a Medtronic loop recorder and analyzed by a cardiac electrophysiologist. To evaluate these potential triggers of AT/AF events, a general linear model with binomial family error distribution was used to fit the data. Then, a stepAIC function from the MASS package in R was used to perform a stepwise model selection using AIC (Akaike information criterion). The analysis only identified the amount of salt intake and the use of polyethylene glycol 3350 as predictors of AT/AF, and high salt intake was the only factor significantly associated with the onset of AT/AF (P < 0.05). Thus, salt intake may trigger AT/AF in ways other than via hypertension.
Keywords
atrial fibrillation, atrial tachycardia, salt, stretch-induced arrhythmias, triggers
Publication Date
6-21-2022
Publication Title
Cureus
Publisher
Springer
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Rights
© 2022 Goddard et al.
Recommended Citation
Goddard J, Speights C J, Borganelli M (June 21, 2022) Salt as a Trigger for Atrial Tachycardia/Fibrillation. Cureus 14(6): e26168. doi:10.7759/cureus.26168
