1. Use of Scandinavian moist smokeless tobacco (snus) and the risk of atrial fibrillation
- Author
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Anders Knutsson, Rosaria Galanti, Johan Hallqvist, Per-Olof Östergren, Lars Alfredsson, Marie Eriksson, Peeter Fredlund, Jenny Hansson, Rino Bellocco, Anders Ahlbom, Cecilia Magnusson, Eleonor I. Fransson, Ylva Trolle Lagerros, Nancy L. Pedersen, Jan-Håkan Jansson, Maria-Pia Hergens, Hergens, M, Galanti, R, Hansson, J, Fredhmd, P, Ahlbom, A, Son, L, Bellocco, R, Eriksson, M, Son, E, Hallqvist, J, Jansson, J, Knutsson, A, Pedersen, N, Lagerros, Y, Östergren, P, and Magnusson, C
- Subjects
Registrie ,Adult ,Male ,Risk ,Tobacco, Smokeless ,Epidemiology ,Population ,Cigarette smoking ,Risk Factors ,Environmental health ,Atrial Fibrillation ,Prevalence ,Medicine ,Humans ,Herbal smokeless tobacco ,Prospective Studies ,Registries ,education ,Sweden ,education.field_of_study ,business.industry ,Risk Factor ,Medicine (all) ,Prospective Studie ,Tobacco, Smokele ,Smokeless tobacco ,General practice ,Snus ,business ,Tobacco product ,Human - Abstract
Background: Snus is a smokeless tobacco product, widely used among Swedish men and increasingly so elsewhere. There is debate as to whether snus is an acceptable "harm-reduction" tobacco product. Since snus use delivers a dose of nicotine equivalent to cigarettes, and has been implicated in cardiac arrhythmia because of associations with sudden cardiovascular death, a relation with atrial fibrillation is plausible and important to investigate. Methods: To assess the relation between use of snus and risk of atrial fibrillation, we carried out a pooled analysis of 7 prospective Swedish cohort studies. In total, 274,882 men, recruited between 1978 and 2004, were followed via the National Patient Register for atrial fibrillation. Primary analyses were restricted to 127,907 never-smokers. Relative risks were estimated using Cox proportional hazard regression. Results: The prevalence of snus use was 25% among never-smokers. During follow-up, 3,069 cases of atrial fibrillation were identified. The pooled relative risk of atrial fibrillation was 1.07 (95% confidence interval = 0.97-1.19) in current snus users, compared with nonusers. Conclusion: Findings from this large national pooling project indicate that snus use is unlikely to confer any important increase in risk of atrial fibrillation
- Published
- 2014