Integrating Clinical, Genetic, and Electrocardiogram-Based Artificial Intelligence to Estimate Risk of Incident Atrial Fibrillation.

BACKGROUND

AF risk estimation is feasible using clinical factors, inherited predisposition, and artificial intelligence (AI)-enabled electrocardiogram (ECG) analysis.

OBJECTIVE

To test whether integrating these distinct risk signals improves AF risk estimation.

METHODS

In the UK Biobank prospective cohort study, we estimated AF risk using three models derived from external populations: the well-validated Cohorts for Aging in Heart and Aging Research in Genomic Epidemiology AF (CHARGE-AF) clinical score, a 1,113,667-variant AF polygenic risk score (PRS), and a published AI-enabled ECG-based AF risk model (ECG-AI). We estimated discrimination of 5-year incident AF using time-dependent area under the receiver operating characteristic (AUROC) and average precision (AP).

RESULTS

Among 49,293 individuals (mean age 65±8 years, 52% women), 825 (2.4%) developed AF within 5 years. Using single models, discrimination of 5-year incident AF was higher using ECG-AI (AUROC 0.705 [95%CI 0.686-0.724]; AP 0.085 [0.071-0.11]) and CHARGE-AF (AUROC 0.785 [0.769-0.801]; AP 0.053 [0.048-0.061]) versus the PRS (AUROC 0.618, [0.598-0.639]; AP 0.038 [0.028-0.045]). The inclusion of all components ("Predict-AF3") was the best performing model (AUROC 0.817 [0.802-0.832]; AP 0.11 [0.091-0.15], p<0.01 vs CHARGE-AF+ECG-AI), followed by the two component model of CHARGE-AF+ECG-AI (AUROC 0.802 [0.786-0.818]; AP 0.098 [0.081-0.13]). Using Predict-AF3, individuals at high AF risk (i.e., 5-year predicted AF risk >2.5%) had a 5-year cumulative incidence of AF of 5.83% (5.33-6.32). At the same threshold, the 5-year cumulative incidence of AF was progressively higher according to the number of models predicting high risk (zero: 0.67% [0.51-0.84], one: 1.48% [1.28-1.69], two: 4.48% [3.99-4.98]; three: 11.06% [9.48-12.61]), and Predict-AF3 achieved favorable net reclassification improvement compared to both CHARGE-AF+ECG-AI (0.039 [0.015-0.066]) and CHARGE-AF+PRS (0.033 [0.0082-0.059]).

CONCLUSIONS

Integration of clinical, genetic, and AI-derived risk signals improves discrimination of 5-year AF risk over individual components. Models such as Predict-AF3 have substantial potential to improve prioritization of individuals for AF screening and preventive interventions.