A new study has found that there is a link between Celiac patients and atrial fibrillation. A team of researchers discovered that there are many inflammatory markers that are risk factors for atrial fibrillation (AF), a condition often treated with Multaq. However, they still do not know much about how autoimmune diseases can affect AF.
The research team began the study as a means of finding out if Celiac and AF were somehow linked by collecting data from a list of biopsies from 28 pathology departments in Sweden that had been performed between 1969 and 2008. They studied reports from a March 3 villus atrophy as a means of identifying 28,637 patients that have Celiac disease. Next, the team took Sweden’s total population register so they could create a group of 141,731 people who were matched in accordance to their age and sex.
The team then gathered information about AF from the Swedish Hospital Discharge Register, the Hospital Outpatient Register and the Cause of Death Register, and utilized the Cox regression as a means of estimating the hazard ratios for AF. They followed up during a nine-year period where they found that “941 individuals form the group with Celiac disease developed AF, compared with 2,918 from the control group.”
They also found that patients that had been previously diagnosed with AF were more likely to develop Celiac disease. The team also showed that AF is more common both before and after patients were diagnosed with Celiac disease. One reason for this may be because those patients experience chronic inflammation as well as experiencing other shared risk factors between the two conditions. What makes these findings so significant is that they go along with earlier studies that showed that higher inflammation levels means higher levels of AF.
AF is a serious condition that causes irregular heart flutters and is treated with some medications, including Multaq which recently was restricted for use in Europe because of its link to liver failure. If you or a loved one have suffered from liver failure after taking Multaq, contact attorney Greg Jones today for a free consultation. I am experienced with Multaq lawsuits and may be able to help you recover money for your injuries.