Comment on “Relationship between the number of comorbidities, quality of life, and cardiac autonomic modulation in patients with coronary disease: a cross-sectional study”

Reply to the letter: Comment on “Relationship between the number of comorbidities, quality of life, and cardiac autonomic modulation in patients with coronary disease: a cross-sectional study”

“…We read with great appreciation the comment by Wang et al 1 for our original article entitled “Relationship between the number of comorbidities, quality of life, and cardiac autonomic modulation in patients with coronary disease: a cross-sectional study 2 .” We would like to thank the authors for their interest in our article and their time to express their concerns.…”

“…Wang et al 1 noted that heart rate is affected by thyroid, pituitary, kidney, and adrenal diseases 3 and that these factors should be considered when using HRV. We agree with this statement, so we had concerned to assess the presence of these comorbidities in our sample using the “Self-Administered Comorbidity Questionnaire 5 .” We would like to highlight that only one participant had kidney disease, as shown in Table 2.…”

“…Regarding the baseline data of the sample, Wang et al 1 suggested the presentation of factors such as occupation, culture, income, and permanent residence, as they could impact the quality of life levels. We understand the importance of this information, and we have collected data about the current occupation and permanent residence of the participants.…”

“…Finally, Wang et al 1 suggested that we should improve the baseline data and conduct random grouping so that the observation group (the experimental group) and the control group were balanced. However, we would like to emphasize that in our study only one group composed of individuals diagnosed with coronary artery disease, patients from a cardiac rehabilitation program, was included, and we performed correlation analyses between the number of comorbidities, HRV indexes, and quality of life, as assessed by the SF-36 6 .…”