Women with posttraumatic stress disorder have larger decreases in heart rate variability during stress tasks

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Abstract

The relationship between posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and high frequency heart rate variability (HF-HRV) was investigated during a resting baseline period and two 4-minute laboratory speech tasks. Participants were 20 women with PTSD and 20 age- and gender-matched controls. Parasympathetic nervous system (PNS) cardiac control was measured as HF-HRV (0.12–0.40 Hz) using power spectrum analysis. Participants with PTSD had significantly greater reductions in HF-HRV during two speech tasks (trauma recall and mental arithmetic) than control. These results suggest that PTSD is related to the magnitude of decrease in parasympathetic cardiac control during stress in women. Health implications of altered PNS activity associated with PTSD deserve further study.

Section snippets

The present study

The evidence reviewed here suggests that PTSD may be characterized by altered PNS functioning, but the findings are not entirely consistent. In particular, the relationship between PTSD and stress-induced changes in PNS activity is not well-established. Previous studies have often reported atypical HR and HF-HRV responses during long tasks, or no change during the task, or apparent ceiling or floor effects that attenuated changes from resting levels. We assert that PTSD is associated with

Methods

The following methods were approved by the local Institutional Review Board prior to study onset. All participants provided written informed consent prior to study participation.

Description of the sample

Descriptive statistics and group comparison statistics for the clinical and demographic characteristics of both groups are presented in Table 1. Groups did not differ in terms of age, race, marital status, weight, BMI, and current cardiovascular medication use. As can be seen in Table 1, control participants completed significantly more years of education and reported a significantly higher perceived SES than participants with PTSD. Participants with PTSD were significantly more likely to

Baseline parasympathetic functioning

Contrary to the first hypothesis, women with PTSD in the present study did not exhibit lower HF-HRV relative to age-matched controls during a resting baseline period. This result is consistent with two previous investigations (Sahar et al., 2001, Woodward et al., 2008), which found no differences in baseline HF-HR when comparing PTSD patients and trauma-exposed controls. However, the results of the present study differ from other investigations of resting HF-HRV among individuals with PTSD (

Conclusions

In summary, the present study found that participants with PTSD demonstrated larger reductions in HF-HRV during both speech tasks compared to control participants. This is interpreted to indicate a larger decline in parasympathetic cardiac control during stress, despite apparently similar levels of parasympathetic activity at rest. Such findings suggest that PTSD is related to the magnitude of decrease in parasympathetic cardiac control during stress in women. Possible implications of altered

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