Atrial fibrillation
Inherited sequence variants in human KCNE5 are associated with atrial fibrillation and Brugada syndrome. Atrial fibrillation is the most common chronic cardiac arrhythmia, affecting 2-3 million in the United States alone, predominantly in the aging population. A minority of cases are linked to ion channel gene mutations, whereas the majority are associated with structural heart defects. Brugada syndrome is a relatively rare but lethal ventricular arrhythmia most commonly linked to voltage-gated sodium channel gene SCN5A mutations, but also associated with some Kv channel gene sequence variants.