The association between COVID-19 infection and incident atrial fibrillation: results from a retrospective cohort study using a large US commercial insurance database

BackgroundWe sought to examine a 1-year incidence of atrial fibrillation (AF) among patients with SARS-CoV-2 virus (COVID-19) in comparison to those with non-COVID-19 acute upper respiratory infection (AURI).MethodsPatients with a diagnosis of COVID-19 (in any setting) between April 2020 and June 2021 were identified in Optum Clinformatics. Two comparator cohorts were constructed: an ‘AURI pandemic’ cohort (AURI diagnosis between April 2020 and June 2021) and an ‘AURI prepandemic’ cohort (AURI diagnosis between January 2018 and December 2018). One-year incidence of AF was compared among: COVID-19 versus AURI pandemic cohort; COVID-19 versus AURI prepandemic cohort; and AURI pandemic versus AURI prepandemic cohort. For each comparison, we applied a matching weights technique to balance covariates. Logistic regression was used to compare the odds of incident AF among the matched cohorts.ResultsWhen comparing the matched COVID-19 (n=102 227) cohort with the AURI pandemic (n=102 101) cohort, higher incidence of AF was observed among the COVID-19 cohort (2.2% vs 1.2%; p