Abstract
In the recent years, short-term heart rate variability (HRV) describing complex variations of beat-to-beat interval series that are mainly controlled by the autonomic nervous system (ANS) has been increasingly analyzed to assess the ANS activity in different diseases and under various conditions. In contrast to long-term HRV analysis, short-term investigations (<30 min) provide a test result almost immediately. Thus, short-term HRV analysis is suitable for ambulatory care, patient monitoring and all those applications where the result is urgently needed. In a previous study, we could show significant variations of 5-min HRV indices according to age in almost all domains (linear and nonlinear) in 1906 healthy subjects from the KORA S4 cohort. Based on the same group of subjects, general gender-related influences on HRV indices are to be determined in this study. Short-term 5-min HRV indices from linear time and frequency domain and from nonlinear methods (compression entropy, detrended fluctuation analysis, traditional and segmented Poincaré plot analysis, irreversibility analysis, symbolic dynamics, correlation and mutual information analysis) were determined from 782 females and 1124 males. First, we examined the gender differences in two age clusters (25–49 years and 50–74 years). Secondly, we investigated the gender-specific development of HRV indices in five age decade categories, namely for ages 25–34, 35–44, 45–54, 55–64 and 65–74 years. In this study, significant modifications of the indices according to gender could be obtained, especially in the frequency domain and correlation analyses. Furthermore, there were significant modifications according to age in nearly all of the domains. The gender differences disappeared within the last two age decades and the age dependencies disappeared in the last decade. To summarize gender and age influences need to be considered when performing HRV studies even if these influences only partly differ.
Highlights
During the last few decades, following the publication of the guidelines on heart rate variability (HRV) [1], the importance of HRV as a tool for assessing the autonomic nervous system activity in many different diseases and conditions has steadily increased
The significance levels of the Time Domain (TD) indices obtained for the test young females (YF) vs. elderly females (EF) were comparable to those achieved for the test young males (YM) vs. elderly males (EM)
It was noted that: (a) gender dependencies of several short-term HRV indices could be observed, (b) gender dependencies disappear with an age older than 55 years, 10 years earlier than the disappearance of age dependencies, and (c) the behavior of age dependencies is different between males and females—more pronounced in men than in women
Summary
During the last few decades, following the publication of the guidelines on heart rate variability (HRV) [1], the importance of HRV as a tool for assessing the autonomic nervous system activity in many different diseases and conditions has steadily increased. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript
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