Key result
Atrial fibrillation was associated with diminished coherence at breathing frequency and a lack of causal interactions between cardiac and respiratory signals compared to healthy controls.
Why the study?
Does atrial fibrillation impair the bidirectional coupling of cardiac and respiratory rhythms compared to healthy controls?
Case-Control
Does atrial fibrillation impair the bidirectional coupling of cardiac and respiratory rhythms compared to healthy controls?
Atrial fibrillation leads to an uncoupling of cardiac and respiratory rhythms, likely due to the loss of sinoatrial node function and diminished vagal modulation.
AF-associated cardiorespiratory uncoupling is hypothesis-generating; prospective studies needed before clinical relevance can be assessed.
Rearranged origin of heart rhythm in patients with atrial fibrillation (AF) influences the regulation of the heart and consequently the respiratory rhythm, and the bidirectional interaction of these rhythms not documented. Hence, we examined coupling of the RR interval and the respiration (Resp) signal by coherence, Granger causality and the cross-sample entropy method of time series analysis in patients with AF and a healthy control group. In healthy subjects, the influence of respiration on cardiac rhythm was found as increased coherence at the breathing frequency (BF) range, significantly stronger interaction and synchrony from Resp to RR than from RR to Resp. On the contrary, in patients with AF, coherence at BF diminished, there were no causal interactions between signals in both directions, which resulted in equally great asynchrony between them. In AF, the absence of full functionality of the sinoatrial node, as an integrator of neural cardiac control, resulted in diminished vagal modulation of heart periods and consequently impaired bidirectional cardio-respiratory interaction.
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Platiša et al. (2016) conducted a case-control in Atrial fibrillation. Atrial fibrillation vs. Healthy control group was evaluated on Coupling of the RR interval and the respiration signal (coherence, Granger causality, cross-sample entropy). Atrial fibrillation was associated with diminished coherence at breathing frequency and a lack of causal interactions between cardiac and respiratory signals compared to healthy controls.
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