Decker JJ, Norby FL, Rooney MR, et al. – In the ARIC study (Atherosclerosis Risk in Communities), researchers identified metabolic syndrome (MetS) components correlated with ischemic stroke in patients with atrial fibrillation (AF). Participants in the study were 1,172 patients with incident AF within 5 years of measuring MetS components. Data revealed that there were 113 ischemic stroke cases after a median follow-up of 14.8 years. After adjustment for CHA2DS2-VASc variables, the presence of MetS was not significantly linked to ischemic stroke. MetS consideration is thus unlikely to improve the prediction of strokes in people with AF. Low HDL (among the individual MetS components) was borderline linked with increased stroke risk after adjustment for CHA2DS2-VASc variables; the remaining MetS variables were not associated with stroke risk.