Arrhythmias articles from across Nature Portfolio

Treatment for periodontal disease might reduce the recurrence of atrial fibrillation (AF) in patients undergoing ablation, suggesting that periodontitis is a modifiable risk factor for AF.

Rebecca Gilchrist discusses the study that demonstrated the long-term modulation of ventricular repolarization by the sequence of electrical activation in the human heart and established the concept of cardiac memory.

Atrial fibrillation is the most common sustained arrhythmia and imposes a substantial burden on patients and health-care providers. Clinical evidence suggests that antiarrhythmic therapy to restore and maintain sinus rhythm (rhythm control) can reduce adverse cardiovascular outcomes in patients with new-onset atrial fibrillation. As a result, a paradigm shift towards rhythm control over rate control therapy is emerging, increasing the clinical need for effective and safe antiarrhythmic drugs.

A molecular autopsy is undertaken in cases of sudden cardiac death with no definitive cause found after conventional autopsy, with the aim of identifying a pathological genetic variant that could account for the death. Greater awareness of malignant arrhythmias in the absence of structural changes in inherited cardiomyopathies has increased the applicability of molecular autopsies, and resulted in improved care of families but new challenges for clinicians.

Timothy syndrome is a severe variant of long QT syndrome, but an accurate in vivo model to study the disease and identify treatments has been lacking. A knock-in swine model of Timothy syndrome now shows that CaMKII-mediated reduction in peak I_Na slows the cardiac impulse propagation and contributes to the severe arrhythmia in the disorder.