Gender differences in the interaction between heart rate and its variability — How to use it to improve the prognostic power of heart rate variability

Sex differences in heart rate variability: a longitudinal study in international elite cross-country skiers

“…Adjustment of heart rate dependent HRV parameters with MeanRR as suggested by Sacha et al (2014) did not change the results.…”

“…Some studies have reported significantly higher HF power at rest in women compared to men (Barnett et al 1999;Fukusaki et al 2000) while others have reported similar HF power between sexes (Agelink et al 2001;Fürholz et al 2013;Ramaekers et al 1998). Absolute HF power is dependent on HR (Sacha et al 2014) and the conflicting results may therefore be a consequence of sex differences in HR (Fürholz et al 2013). Endurance training increases vagal activity, both in female and male athletes (Carter et al 2003).…”

Interplay between heart rate and its variability: a prognostic game

“…In other words, HR was a strong risk factor of cardiac death in men and strengthening its influence on HRV boosted the HRV prediction performance for cardiac mortality, conversely, HR was a poor predictor of non-cardiac death in male subgroup and weakening its impact augmented the HRV prognostic value for non-cardiac mortality. However, HR did not predict any outcomes in females and the exclusion of its influence improved the HRV prognostic ability for every mode of death in women (Figure 1B) (Sacha et al, 2014). …”

“…As HRV is becoming more dependent on HR (i.e., from the first to the seventh class), its predictive ability increases in men for cardiac death but decreases for non-cardiac one, while in women, it decreases for both outcomes. It is noteworthy that HR was a strong predictor of cardiac death and a weak predictor of non-cardiac death in males, however, in females HR did not predict any mode of death (Reprinted with modification from Sacha et al, 2014). (C) Predictive performance for cardiac mortality (i.e., AUC, area under receiver-operator characteristics curves) for different classes of modified HRV indices and their correlation coefficients (r) with HR, during the recovery after exercise test are presented.…”

“…In general, it seems that for populations and events where HR is a significant risk factor the enhancement of its impact improves the prognostic value of HRV, however, for groups and outcomes where HR is not or is a weak risk factor, the exclusion of its influence increases the HRV prediction capacity (Sacha et al, 2013c, 2014; Sacha, 2014a,b). In particular, such phenomena were observed in the study addressing HRV and HR in different genders after myocardial infarction (Sacha et al, 2014). In other words, HR was a strong risk factor of cardiac death in men and strengthening its influence on HRV boosted the HRV prediction performance for cardiac mortality, conversely, HR was a poor predictor of non-cardiac death in male subgroup and weakening its impact augmented the HRV prognostic value for non-cardiac mortality.…”