A comparison of autonomic function in patients with inflammatory bowel disease and in healthy controls

We evaluated autonomic function, symptoms and psychological parameters in patients with ulcerative colitis (UC), Crohn’s disease (CD) and matched controls to assess whether UC patients have greater basal sympathetic autonomic activity. Outpatients with UC (n = 15), CD (n = 13) and healthy controls (n = 28) underwent spectral analysis of heart rate variability to assess cardiac autonomic function, a methacholine challenge to assess cholinergic pulmonary responsiveness, and questionnaires assessing disease severity, anxiety and depression. UC but not CD patients had greater sympathetic activity than controls with increased absolute (6600 vs 5884; P = 0.04) and relative (62.8%vs 54.8%; P = 0.02) low frequency areas. This was not because of increased overall autonomic nervous system (ANS) activation and was independent of disease activity. In UC patients, trait (personality‐related) anxiety correlated strongly with disease symptoms (R = 0.84; P