ArticleJournal of epidemiology and community health2023
Loss of a child and the risk of atrial fibrillation: a Danish population-based prospective cohort study.
Article in Journal of epidemiology and community health, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 1 paper, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
1 citing paper in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 2 citations in OpenAlex.
- Grief-Related Chest Pain: A Review, Conceptual Analysis, and Integrative Model.Psychophysiology · 2026Pooled it
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
4 authors at 4 institutions in 3 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundSeveral studies suggest that bereavement is associated with increased risks of ischaemic heart disease, heart failure, stroke and cardiovascular mortality. Knowledge regarding the link between bereavement and the risk of atrial fibrillation (AF) is limited. We investigated whether the death of a child, one of the most severe forms of bereavement, is associated with AF.
methodsWe conducted a population-based cohort study involving parents of live-born children during 1973-2016 from the Danish Medical Birth Register (n=2 804 244). Information on children's death, parental AF and sociodemographic and other health-related characteristics was obtained by individual-level linkage between several Danish population-based registers. We analysed the association between loss of a child and AF using Poisson regression.
resultsDuring the up to 39 years follow-up, 64 216 (2.3%) parents lost a child and 74 705 (2.7%) had an AF. Bereaved parents had a higher risk of AF than the non-bereaved; the corresponding incidence rate ratio (IRR) and 95% CI were 1.12 (1.08 to 1.17). The association was present both when the child died of cardiovascular diseases (IRR (95% CI): 1.42 (1.20 to 1.69)), and of other causes (IRR (95% CI): 1.11 (1.06 to 1.16)), tended to be U-shaped according to the deceased child's age at loss, but did not differ substantially according to the number of remaining live children at loss, the number of deceased children or the time since the loss.
conclusionsThe death of a child was associated with a modestly increased risk of AF. Bereaved parents may benefit from increased support from family members and health professionals.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.