Analysis of electrolyte characteristics in patients with primary aldosteronism complicated with arrhythmia

Background: primary aldosteronism is important for electrolyte balance in addition to its direct cardiovascular effects. High aldosterone can aggravate electrolyte disorder, resulting in low potassium, low calcium, high sodium, low phosphorus and so on. Electrolyte balance is the basis of maintaining normal electrophysiological activity of cells. Electrolyte disturbance can affect cardiac electrical activity, and then may induce a series of arrhythmias, increase cardiovascular burden, hospitalization rate and mortality rate. Objective: To study the electrolyte characteristics of arrhythmia in patients with primary aldosteronism. Methods: A retrospective study was performed on 287 patients diagnosed with primary aldosteronism who were admitted to the Department of Cardiology, Second Clinical Hospital of Lanzhou University from January 2018 to May 2021, and they were divided into arrhythmia group (n = 137 cases) and non-arrhythmia group (n = 150 cases) according to whether they had arrhythmia. The electrolyte characteristics of the two groups were compared. Results: There were no significant differences in age, gender, basal blood pressure, activity of sitorenin, blood sodium, blood calcium, blood magnesium and blood phosphorus between the two groups (P > 0.05). Compared with the group without arrhythmia, serum potassium in the group with arrhythmia was lower(P < 0.05)., the sitting plasma aldosterone and body mass index (BMI) were higher (P < 0.05), and the detection rate of hypokalemia was higher in patients with arrhythmia (P < 0.0)5). Speatman correlation analysis showed that there was a positive correlation between sitting aldosterone and BMI (R = 0.311, P < 0.05), and a negative correlation between sitting aldosterone and potassium (R = -0.253, P < 0.05). Conclusion: Hypokalemia is the characteristic of electrolytes in patients with arrhythmia. In the electrolysis disorder caused by increased aldosterone, hypokalemia is more likely to induce arrhythmia. In addition, patients with primary aldosteronism with higher BMI are more likely to develop arrhythmias, and there may be a certain correlation between BMI and blood potassium, which needs further demonstration.