Why the study?
While guidelines recommend 5 min ECGs for HRV, the validity and applicability of 10 s recordings for risk prediction in epidemiological studies was unclear.
Does ultra-short heart rate variability (usHRV) derived from 10-second ECGs accurately correlate with standard 5-minute HRV in a general population cohort?
Does ultra-short heart rate variability (usHRV) derived from 10-second ECGs accurately correlate with standard 5-minute HRV in a general population cohort?
Ultra-short heart rate variability derived from routine 10-second ECGs is a valid proxy for standard 5-minute vagal-mediated HRV, enabling large-scale epidemiological research on autonomic nervous system dysregulation.
May enable large-scale autonomic research via routine ECGs; leaves open clinical adoption pending prospective validation.
Introduction Heart rate variability (HRV), defined as the variability of consecutive heart beats, is an important biomarker for dysregulations of the autonomic nervous system (ANS) and is associated with the development, course, and outcome of a variety of mental and physical health problems. While guidelines recommend using 5 min electrocardiograms (ECG), recent studies showed that 10 s might be sufficient for deriving vagal-mediated HRV. However, the validity and applicability of this approach for risk prediction in epidemiological studies is currently unclear to be used. Methods This study evaluates vagal-mediated HRV with ultra-short HRV (usHRV) based on 10 s multichannel ECG recordings of N = 4,245 and N = 2,392 participants of the Study of Health in Pomerania (SHIP) from two waves of the SHIP-TREND cohort, additionally divided into a healthy and health-impaired subgroup. Association of usHRV with HRV derived from long-term ECG recordings (polysomnography: 5 min before falling asleep [ N = 1,041]; orthostatic testing: 5 min of rest before probing an orthostatic reaction [ N = 1,676]) and their validity with respect to demographic variables and depressive symptoms were investigated. Results High correlations ( r = .52–.75) were revealed between usHRV and HRV. While controlling for covariates, usHRV was the strongest predictor for HRV. Furthermore, the associations of usHRV and HRV with age, sex, obesity, and depressive symptoms were similar. Conclusion This study provides evidence that usHRV derived from 10 s ECG might function as a proxy of vagal-mediated HRV with similar characteristics. This allows the investigation of ANS dysregulation with ECGs that are routinely performed in epidemiological studies to identify protective and risk factors for various mental and physical health problems.
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Krause et al. (2023) studied this question.
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