Journal
EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF APPLIED PHYSIOLOGY
Volume 118, Issue 10, Pages 2233-2240Publisher
SPRINGER
DOI: 10.1007/s00421-018-3957-1
Keywords
Heart rate variability; Paediatric; Vagal; Sympathetic; Heart rate
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Funding
- Collaborative Health Research Projects Grant (CHRP)
- Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) [134765]
- Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) [462258-2014]
- Finnish Foundation for Cardiovascular Research
- Paulo Foundation
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The aim of this study was to examine the effect of passive heat stress on heart rate variability parameters in healthy children. Fifteen children (9.3 +/- 1.6 years) of both sexes (eight male) participated in two randomized experimental conditions separated by 5-12 days. Children were seated for 2 h in an environmental chamber for two sessions: neutral (22.4 +/- 0.1 A degrees C, 40.4 +/- 6.5% RH) and hot (34.9 +/- 0.3 A degrees C, 36.6 +/- 6.2% RH) conditions. Electrocardiogram, mean skin temperature, tympanic temperature, and blood pressure were recorded. Five min epochs were averaged for analysis of cardiac autonomic function over the 2-h protocol. Mean skin and tympanic temperatures and heart rate increased during the hot condition (all p < 0.01) while mean arterial pressure decreased (p < 0.01). During the hot condition, root-mean-square difference of successive normal RR intervals (45 +/- 9 to 38 +/- 7 ms), and low- (LF, 1536 +/- 464 vs. 935 +/- 154 ms(2)) and high-frequency power (HF, 1544 +/- 693 vs. 866 +/- 355 ms(2)) decreased, whereas LF/HF ratio increased (1.64 +/- 0.24 vs. 2.40 +/- 0.23 au); all indices were different from neutral (all p < 0.05). These were all unchanged throughout the neutral condition (all p > 0.05), except for LF/HF ratio which decreased during the neutral condition (p < 0.05). Mild hyperthermia elicited marked changes in cardiac autonomic control in young children. These data suggest that, in healthy children, vagal withdrawal is responsible for the cardiac autonomic response to hyperthermia.
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