PT - JOURNAL ARTICLE AU - Mostofsky, Elizabeth AU - Berg Johansen, Martin AU - Tjønneland, Anne AU - Chahal, Harpreet S AU - Mittleman, Murray A AU - Overvad, Kim TI - Chocolate intake and risk of clinically apparent atrial fibrillation: the Danish Diet, Cancer, and Health Study AID - 10.1136/heartjnl-2016-310357 DP - 2017 Aug 01 TA - Heart PG - 1163--1167 VI - 103 IP - 15 4099 - http://heart.bmj.com/content/103/15/1163.short 4100 - http://heart.bmj.com/content/103/15/1163.full SO - Heart2017 Aug 01; 103 AB - Objective To evaluate the association between chocolate intake and incident clinically apparent atrial fibrillation or flutter (AF).Methods The Danish Diet, Cancer, and Health Study is a large population-based prospective cohort study. The present study is based on 55 502 participants (26 400 men and 29 102 women) aged 50–64 years who had provided information on chocolate intake at baseline. Incident cases of AF were ascertained by linkage with nationwide registries.Results During a median of 13.5 years there were 3346 cases of AF. Compared with chocolate intake less than once per month, the rate of AF was lower for people consuming 1–3 servings/month (hazard ratio (HR) 0.90, 95% confidence interval (CI) 0.82 to 0.98), 1 serving/week (HR 0.83, 95% CI 0.74 to 0.92), 2–6 servings/week (HR 0.80, 95% CI 0.71 to 0.91) and ≥1 servings/day (HR 0.84, 95% CI 0.65 to 1.09; p-linear trend <0.0001), with similar results for men and women.Conclusions Accumulating evidence indicates that moderate chocolate intake may be inversely associated with AF risk, although residual confounding cannot be ruled out.