Chaos in blood pressure control

A number of control mechanisms are comprised within blood pressure regulation, ranging from events on the cellular level up to circulating hormones. Despite their vast number, blood pressure fluctuations occur preferably within a certain range (under physiological conditions). A specific class of dynamic systems has been extensively studied over the past several years: nonlinear coupled systems, which often reveal a characteristic form of motion termed "chaos". The system is restricted to a certain range in phase space, but the motion is never periodic. The attractor the system moves on has a non-integer dimension. What all chaotic systems have in common is their sensitive dependence on initial conditions. The question arises as to whether blood pressure regulation can be explained by such models. Many efforts have been made to characterise heart rate variability and EEG dynamics by parameters of chaos theory (e.g., fractal dimensions and Lyapunov exponents). These method were successfully applied to dynamics observed in single organs, but very few studies have dealt with blood pressure dynamics. This mini-review first gives an overview on the history of blood pressure dynamics and the methods suitable to characterise the dynamics by means of tools derived from the field of nonlinear dynamics. Then applications to systemic blood pressure are discussed. After a short survey on heart rate variability, which is indirectly reflected in blood pressure variability, some dynamic aspects of resistance vessels are given. Intriguingly, systemic blood pressure reveals a change in fractal dimensions and Lyapunov exponents, when the major short-term control mechanism--the arterial baroreflex--is disrupted. Indeed it seems that cardiovascular time series can be described by tools from nonlinear dynamics 66. These methods allow a novel description of some important aspects of biological systems. Both the linear and the nonlinear tools complement each other and can be useful in characterising the stability and complexity of blood pressure control.