Objectives Atrial fibrillation is a clinically common arrhythmia, which is characterised by atrial fibrosis, myocardial fibroblast is play a important role in fibrosis process. We designed this experiment to investigate the different chemotatic effects of the cardiac fibroblasts to the serum between atrial fibrillation and other control groups, and to predict the relationship between fibrosis followed atrial fibrillation and movemoment behavior of fibroblast.

Methods The selected objects was divided into four groups which were controls (SR, n = 16), non-Af atrial arrhythmia (AA, n = 18), paroxysmalAf (Paro-Af, n = 19) and persistent Af (Pers-Af, n = 20), serum were detected; Cardiac fibroblasts were isolated from the ventricles of neonatal Sprague-Dawley rats (1–3days old) and primary cultured with digestion, different speed adherence methods. The cell in 3 to 4 passages were used for transwel lchamber assay to determine the chemotatic effects of the cardiac fibroblasts to the serum between atrial fibrillation and other control groups, which is designed to analysis the cells through the polycarbonate membrane and atrial fibrillation inthe relevance of each group, and to predict the progress of Af.

Results Compared with control, the cells that migrated through the polycarbonate membrane were obviously increased in Af groups. The strongest Chemotaxis was induced by the serum from the patients of persistent Atrial fibrillation (pers-Af), the numbers of migrated cells in non-Af atrial arrhythmia(AA) were higher than that in paroxysmal Atrial fibrillation (paro-Af), that in control group was least. The multiple logistic regression analyses show that the migrated cells in the lower surface were related to atrial fibrillation and left atrial diameter.

Conclusions 1). The chmotactic effects of the Af serum are obviously higher than that of control serum. The differences of Af serum among each group show that myocardial fibrosis is a chronic, insidious, delayed process. The migration and infiltration of cardiac fibroblast indirectly reflect the presence, severity, extent of the myocardial damage. 2). The changes of migrated cells precede the changes of left atrial diameter (LAD), indicating that the cause of fibrosis is more important, and the positive correlation between Af and left atrial diameter may not directly causality, they are caused by the fibrosis due to the heart muscle injury and the fibrosis is closely related to synchronisation of the atrial contraction. 3). The number of cells migration may be due to inducer that the damaged tissue and cell release.