Effect of gender-related depression on heart rate variability during an autonomic nervous test

Abnormal circadian rhythm of heart rate variability and their association with symptoms in patients with major depressive disorder

BACKGROUND

Heart rate variability (HRV) is often reduced in patients with major depressive disorder (MDD) and is linked to symptoms. However, prior studies have mainly focused on short-term HRV, with limited exploration of the 24-h HRV circadian rhythm, despite its ability to comprehensively capture overall HRV distribution and dynamic fluctuations. In this study, we investigated the circadian rhythms of 24-h HRV indices in patients with MDD and their associations with symptom severity.

METHODS

We recorded 24-h electrocardiograms in 73 patients with MDD (53 in major depressive episode and 20 in remission period) and 31 healthy controls. An extended cosine model was used to model the circadian rhythm of six HRV indices by five parameters: the mesor, amplitude, duty cycle, curve smoothness, and acrophase. Symptom severity was evaluated using the Hamilton Depression Scale and Hamilton Anxiety Scale.

RESULTS

Compared with the control group, patients with MDD had a significantly smaller SampEn mesor, higher HF duty cycle, and lower heart rate (HR) duty cycle. They also had a significantly higher curve smoothness for HR, RMSSD, and HF. The mesor for SampEn, along with the curve smoothness for HR and ln RMSSD, were associated with certain symptoms in patients with MDD.

LIMITATIONS

The cross-sectional design and psychiatric treatment of most patients with MDD limited our findings.

CONCLUSION

Patients with MDD exhibit abnormal HRV circadian rhythms that are associated with symptoms. Moreover, 24-h ECG monitoring may potentially serve as an adjunct value to objectively evaluate clinical symptoms in these patients.

Impaired Modulation of the Autonomic Nervous System in Adult Patients with Major Depressive Disorder

Patients with major depressive disorder (MDD) have an increased risk for cardiac events. This is partly attributed to a disbalance of the autonomic nervous system (ANS) indicated by a reduced vagal tone and a (relative) sympathetic hyperactivity. However, in most studies, heart rate variability (HRV) was only examined while resting. So far, it remains unclear whether the dysbalance of the ANS in patients with MDD is restricted to resting or whether it is also evident during sympathetic and parasympathetic activation. The aim of this study was to compare the responses of the ANS to challenges that stimulated the sympathetic and, respectively, the parasympathetic nervous systems in patients with MDD. Forty-six patients with MDD (female 27 (58.7%), mean age 44 ± 17 years) and 46 healthy controls (female 26 (56.5%), mean age 44 ± 20 years) underwent measurement of time- and frequency-dependent domains of HRV at rest, while standing (sympathetic challenge), and during slow-paced breathing (SPB, vagal, i.e., parasympathetic challenge). Patients with MDD showed a higher heart rate, a reduced HRV, and a diminished vagal tone during resting, standing, and SPB compared to controls. Patients with MDD and controls responded similarly to sympathetic and vagal activation. However, the extent of modulation of the ANS was impaired in patients with MDD, who showed a reduced decrease in the vagal tone but also a reduced increase in sympathetic activity when switching from resting to standing. Assessing changes in the ANS during sympathetic and vagal activation via respective challenges might serve as a future biomarker and help to allocate patients with MDD to therapies like HRV biofeedback and psychotherapy that were recently found to modulate the vagal tone.

Exploring a multimodal approach for utilizing digital biomarkers for childhood mental health screening

Background

Depression and anxiety are prevalent mental health concerns among children and adolescents. The application of conventional assessment methods, such as survey questionnaires to children, may lead to self-reporting issues. Digital biomarkers provide extensive data, reducing bias in mental health self-reporting, and significantly influence patient screening. Our primary objectives were to accurately assess children's mental health and to investigate the feasibility of using various digital biomarkers.

Methods

This study included a total of 54 boys and girls aged between 7 to 11 years. Each participant's mental state was assessed using the Depression, Anxiety, and Stress Scale. Subsequently, the subjects participated in digital biomarker collection tasks. Heart rate variability (HRV) data were collected using a camera sensor. Eye-tracking data were collected through tasks displaying emotion-face stimuli. Voice data were obtained by recording the participants' voices while they engaged in free speech and description tasks.

Results

Depressive symptoms were positively correlated with low frequency (LF, 0.04-0.15 Hz of HRV) in HRV and negatively associated with eye-tracking variables. Anxiety symptoms had a negative correlation with high frequency (HF, 0.15-0.40 Hz of HRV) in HRV and a positive association with LF/HF. Regarding stress, eye-tracking variables indicated a positive correlation, while pNN50, which represents the proportion of NN50 (the number of pairs of successive R-R intervals differing by more than 50 milliseconds) divided by the total number of NN (R-R) intervals, exhibited a negative association. Variables identified for childhood depression included LF and the total time spent looking at a sad face. Those variables recognized for anxiety were LF/HF, heart rate (HR), and pNN50. For childhood stress, HF, LF, and Jitter showed different correlation patterns between the two grade groups.

Discussion

We examined the potential of multimodal biomarkers in children, identifying features linked to childhood depression, particularly LF and the Sad.TF:time. Anxiety was most effectively explained by HRV features. To explore reasons for non-replication of previous studies, we categorized participants by elementary school grades into lower grades (1st, 2nd, 3rd) and upper grades (4th, 5th, 6th).

Conclusion

This study confirmed the potential use of multimodal digital biomarkers for children's mental health screening, serving as foundational research.

A sex-specific pathway linking early life maltreatment, vagal activity, and depressive symptoms

Background: Experiences of early life maltreatment (ELM) are alarmingly common and represent a risk factor for the development of psychopathology, particularly depression. Research has focused on alterations in autonomic nervous system (ANS) functioning as a mediator of negative mental health outcomes associated with ELM. Early alterations in autonomic vagal activity (vmHRV) may moderate the relationship between ELM and depression, particularly when considering forms of emotional maltreatment. Recent evidence suggests that the relationships of both ELM and vmHRV with depression may be non-linear, particularly considering females.Objective: Building on and extending theoretical considerations and previous work, the present work aims to further the current understanding of the complex relationships between ELM exposure, vmHRV, and depression.Methods: This study uses an adaptive modelling approach, combining exploratory network-based analyses with linear and quadratic moderation analyses, drawing on a large sample of males and females across adolescence (total N = 213; outpatient at-risk sample and healthy controls) and adulthood (total N = 85; community-based convenience sample).Results: Exploratory network-based analyses reveal that exposure to emotional abuse is particularly central within a network of ELM subtypes, depressive symptoms, and concurrent vmHRV in both adolescents and adults. In adults, emotional neglect shows strong associations with both emotional abuse and vmHRV and is highly central as a network node, which is not observed in adolescents. Moderator analyses reveal significant interactions between emotional maltreatment and vmHRV predicting depressive symptoms in adult females. Significant quadratic relationships of emotional maltreatment and vmHRV with depression are observed in both adolescent and adult females.Conclusions: The present findings contribute to the understanding of the psychological and physiological mechanisms by which ELM acts as a risk factor for the development of depression. Ultimately, this will contribute to the development of targeted and effective intervention strategies to mitigate the detrimental effects of early adversity.

Vagally-mediated heart rate variability and depression in children and adolescents - A meta-analytic update

BACKGROUND

Depression is one of the most common mental disorders and a leading cause of disability worldwide. In adults, depression is characterized by decreased vagal activity (vagally-mediated heart rate variability; vmHRV), while vmHRV is inversely correlated with depressive symptoms. In children/adolescents, a 2016 synthesis (4 studies, 259 individuals) found similarly decreased vmHRV in clinical depression, but no significant association between depressive symptoms and vmHRV (6 studies, 2625 individuals). Given the small number of studies previously considered for synthesis and the rapidly growing evidence base in this area, a meta-analytic update was warranted.

METHOD

A previous review was updated by a systematic literature search to identify studies that (a) compared vmHRV in clinically depressed children/adolescents with non-depressed controls and (b) reported associations between vmHRV and depression severity.

RESULTS

The search update identified 5 additional studies for group comparison (k = 9 studies in total, n = 608 individuals in total) and 15 additional studies for correlational meta-analysis (k = 21 studies in total, n = 4224 individuals in total). Evidence was found for lower resting-state vmHRV in clinically depressed children/adolescents compared to healthy controls (SMD = -0.593, 95 % CI [-1.1760; -0.0101], I2 = 90.92 %) but not for a significant association between vmHRV and depressive symptoms (r = -0.053, 95 % CI [-0.118; 0.012], I2 = 65.77 %). Meta-regression revealed a significant association between depressive symptoms and vmHRV as a function of sex.

LIMITATIONS

The samples considered are highly heterogeneous. Data on the longitudinal association between vmHRV and depression are currently lacking.

CONCLUSION

The present findings support the use of vmHRV as a biomarker for clinical depression in children/adolescents.

Identification of major depression patients using machine learning models based on heart rate variability during sleep stages for pre-hospital screening

With the COVID-19 pandemic causing challenges in hospital admissions globally, the role of home health monitoring in aiding the diagnosis of mental health disorders has become increasingly important. This paper proposes an interpretable machine learning solution to optimise initial screening for major depressive disorder (MDD) in both male and female patients. The data is from the Stanford Technical Analysis and Sleep Genome Study (STAGES). We analyzed 5-min short-term electrocardiogram (ECG) signals during nighttime sleep stages of 40 MDD patients and 40 healthy controls, with a 1:1 gender ratio. After preprocessing, we calculated the time-frequency parameters of heart rate variability (HRV) based on the ECG signals and used common machine learning algorithms for classification, along with feature importance analysis for global decision analysis. Ultimately, the Bayesian optimised extremely randomized trees classifier (BO-ERTC) showed the best performance on this dataset (accuracy 86.32%, specificity 86.49%, sensitivity 85.85%, F1-score 0.86). By using feature importance analysis on the cases confirmed by BO-ERTC, we found that gender is one of the most important factors affecting the prediction of the model, which should not be overlooked in our assisted diagnosis. This method can be embedded in portable ECG monitoring systems and is consistent with the literature results.

The impact of environmental and biological factors on the resting heart rate of dogs as assessed using 20 years of data from safety pharmacology studies

INTRODUCTION

A safety pharmacology study detects and evaluates potential side effects of a new drug on physiological function at therapeutic levels and above and, in most cases, prior to the initiation of clinical trials. The aim of this study was to investigate the effects of environmental and biological factors on resting heart rate (HR), a representative cardiac parameter in cardiovascular safety pharmacology.

METHODS

Over twenty years, 143 dogs (Beagles, Labradors and mongrels) received implanted telemetry transmitters to measure aortic pressure (AP), left ventricular pressure (LVP), Electrocardiogram (ECG) and body temperature. Throughout the 7-h period of data collection, data were continuously recorded without drug treatment and included the range of HRs resulting from spontaneous physiological changes. Statistics and visualizations were calculated using R and Spotfire.

RESULTS

Beagles had a higher HR than the mongrels, while Labradors had a lower HR than mongrels. Labradors were found to have a sex-based difference in HR, with females having a higher HR. A higher HR was observed in young animals of all breeds when they were in contact with humans. The cage system affected the HR of Labradors and mongrels more than Beagles. Larger dogs (e.g. Labrador) have a lower HR than smaller dogs (Beagles). Animals that are younger were found to have more HR variability and have a higher HR than older animals. In addition, older animals reacted less to the application period and human interaction than younger animals. The HR response of animals inside a cage system may depend on the cage system in which they were bred. A familiar cage system typically has less impact on HR.

DISCUSSION

This retrospective data base evaluation has demonstrated the impact of environmental and biological factors on cardiovascular parameters in the context of performing safety pharmacology studies. Breed, sex, age and the type of cage system used affected, at least in some cases, the HR and its variability. They should therefore be carefully considered when designing safety pharmacology studies to have the highest possible test sensitivity.

Simultaneous monitoring of activity and heart rate variability in depressed patients: A pilot study using a wearable monitor for 3 consecutive days

INTRODUCTION

Reduced activity and sleep-wake rhythm disturbances are essential features of depressive episodes. In addition, alterations in heart rate variability (HRV) have been implicated in depression. By using a wearable sensor that monitors 3-dimensional acceleration and HRV simultaneously, we examined the activity and HRV indices in depressive episode of mood disorders.

METHODS

Participants were 19 patients (13 major depressive disorder [MDD] and 6 bipolar depression; 11 females) and 18 controls (9 females) matched for age and ethnicity (all Japanese) who completed 3 consecutive days of all-day monitoring by a small and light device attached to the chest.

RESULTS

Activity magnitude was significantly reduced while lying/resting time was increased in depressed patients, compared with controls. When males and females were examined separately, male, but not female, patients showed significant reduction in activity. HRV indices such as R-R interval and high-frequency power (a parameter for the parasympathetic system) were significantly decreased in patients than in controls. Significant differences in activity and HRV indices were seen only in males. Sympathetic load during sleep significantly correlated with damped rest-activity rhythm in depressed patients.

LIMITATIONS

The number of participants was small, and the majority of the participants were taking psychotropic medications.

CONCLUSIONS

We obtained evidence for reduced activity, increased lying/resting time, and reduced HRV indices in male depressed patients. The simultaneous monitoring for activity and HRV suggested greater sympathetic load during sleep is associated with damped rest-activity rhythm (increased activity during sleep and decreased daytime activity), which might be a characteristic pathology of depression.