Background: Heart rate variability (HRV) analysis is an important tool to assess the cardiac autonomic regulation in health and disease. Time-domain and frequency-domain analyses are linear methods that are traditionally used for HRV analysis. Application of non-linear methods in HRV analysis has been shown to provide additional information and has been found to be useful in predicting complications and mortality in cardiovascular disease conditions. HRV analysis during deep breathing is commonly used to assess the integrity and extent of the parasympathetic control of the heart.
Aim and Objectives: This study aims to analyze the HRV during deep breathing at 0.1 Hz frequency, 6 breaths/minute using non-linear methods and to see whether they correlate with the time-domain measures of HRV.
Materials and Methods: Twelve healthy volunteers performed deep slow breathing at 0.1 Hz frequency for 5 min following recorded prompts. In the time domain, mean heart rate (MHR), SDNN, RMSSD, and pNN50 during baseline and deep breathing were measured. In the non-linear domain, approximate entropy (AppEn), sample entropy (SampEn), and detrended fluctuation analysis DFA (α1) were calculated. The quantitative measures of the Poincare plot, namely, SD1, SD2, and SD2/SD1, which are known to provide linear information, were also estimated. Wilcoxon’s signed-rank test was used to compare the baseline parameters with those of deep breathing. Spearman’s correlation was used to assess the correlation between the parameters obtained from the different methods.
Results: There was no significant change in the MHR, RMSSD, pNN50, and SD1 during 0.1 Hz deep breathing while SDNN, SD2, SD2/SD1, and DFAα1 showed a significant increase. Furthermore, 0.1 Hz breathing decreased the AppEn and SampEn measures of HRV. There was a strong correlation among SDNN, RMSSD, pNN50, SD1, SD2, SD2/SD1, and DFAα1, but there was no correlation between any of the above measures and the non-linear measures AppEn and SampEn.
Conclusion: While the non-linear measure DFAα1 correlates well with time domain measures of HRV and the quantitative measures of the Poincare plot during 0.1 Hz breathing, AppEn and SampEn do not show such correlation. Instead, they decrease significantly when breathing is voluntarily controlled at 6 breaths/min.
Key words: 0.1 Hz breathing; Heart Rate Variability; Time-domain Analysis; Non-linear Methods; Correlation; Approximate entropy; Sample Entropy; Poincare plot
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