They could also "have important implications for precision health and prevention of cardiovascular disease," says co-senior study author Cristen J. Willer, an associate professor of computational medicine and bioinformatics at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.

From the genes that they identified, the researchers compiled a genetic "risk score" for helping to pick out individuals at higher risk for A-fib for closer monitoring.

Many of the genes influence heart development in the fetus. The team says that this implies that variants in these genes could instil susceptibility to A-fib before birth.

Another possibility is that they could cause genes that have been inactive since before birth to switch on again in adulthood.

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