Effects of Aging, Gender and Metabolic Syndrome on the Dynamics of a Heart

Through the analysis of heart rate variability (HRV), we studied some effects of aging, gender and metabolic syndrome on the dynamics of a heart by using conventional linear analysis and the recently developed nonlinear measures. HRV data were extracted from an electrocardiogram with a duration of 10 minutes and a sampling frequency of 1000 Hz. In this study, we found that HRV of a woman was faster and more complex than that of a man. Aging effects reduced the variability of the heartbeat and inhibited the activity of the sympathetic nervous system. In analysis of the temporal domain, every measure showed diminished heartbeat activity in subjects with metabolic syndrome. Results in the frequency domain led to the conclusion that metabolic syndrome inhibited the behavior of the autonomic nervous system. Nonlinear and symbolic analysis showed that metabolic syndrome induced the reduction of complexity in the heartbeat, resulting in some significant changes dependent on age. KCI Citation Count: 3