The effects of long chain polyunsaturated fatty acids on local activation properties in dogs vulnerable to atrial fibrillation

Marine derived long chain polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs) were found to have benefits in reducing inducibility and maintenance of atrial fibrillation (AF) in a dog model. This study was conducted to evaluate the effect of PUFAs on local atrial electrical conduction properties acquired via a multi-electrode plaque sutured to the posterior wall of the left atrium of the heart in these dogs. Eleven dogs underwent simultaneous atrioventricular pacing (SAVP) for 2 weeks, and were organized into 2 groups: 5 dogs received no PUFAs (SAVP-PLACEBO), 6 dogs received Eicosapentaenoic or Docosahexaenoic acid derived from fish oils (SAVP-PUFA), where PUFAs were given for 21 days, starting 1 week prior to pacing and during the 2 week pacing period. Three features were extracted, which were the average conduction velocity, average intra atrial conduction time, and total activation time. The PUFA group had a faster average conduction velocity (0.82±0.19 m/s) than the PLACEBO group (0.47±0.21 m/s, P=0.02). Using the average conduction velocity feature, classification was performed with a linear classifier and leave-one-out method. In the SAVP-PLACEBO group, 60% of the dogs were correctly classified, and 66% of the dogs were correctly classified in SAVP-PUFA group, leading to an overall classification accuracy of 63.5%.