Arrhythmias & electrophysiologyResearch article
Causal mitochondrial signatures in atrial fibrillation: Insights from integrated multi-omics and multi-faceted approaches
- Mendelian Randomization, summary-based Mendelian Randomization, and colocalization analysis
- integrated multi-omics
- Benjamini-Hochberg method employed to control for false positives
- single-cell RNA sequencing
- predictive models
Authors' conclusion
The study identified 16 mitochondrial genes associated with AF and demonstrated the potential of mitochondrial genes as biomarkers.
Study context
- Population
- Mitochondrial genes from MitoCarta version 3.0 and atrial fibrillation (AF) (from FinnGen)
- Comparison
- Mitochondrial gene methylation, expression and protein QTLs as instrumental variables vs risk of AF
Main finding
As reported in the abstract
Mitochondrial genes identified via MR and SMR analyses
genes identified via MR and SMR analyses
16
Further findings
NME4 gene and AF
- NME4 demonstrated consistent causal associations with AF across all 3 levels; methylation at cg08183303, high gene expression and elevated protein levels associated with an increased risk of AF
Cellular-level expression of key gene
- key gene highly expressed in fibroblasts, with expression levels dynamically changing as cells evolve
Machine learning prediction models
- good performance in disease prediction
Original publication
Causal mitochondrial signatures in atrial fibrillation: Insights from integrated multi-omics and multi-faceted approaches. Heart Rhythm. Published 2 July 2026. doi:10.1016/j.hrthm.2026.06.041
Summarised from the published abstract; every number is checked against it