Yang et al. (2019) demonstrated that the decreased expression level of Cx43 played an important role in the initiation and development of a chronic intermittent hypoxia-induced AF rat model, which was paralleled by another study in which lower expression of Cx43 was also detected in aged rabbit atrial tissue with AF (Yan et al., 2018). This evidence concerns the gene GJA1 and atrial fibrillation.