Heart Rate Variability as a Prospective Predictor of Early COVID-19 Symptoms

Abstract

Heart rate variability (HRV) is the fluctuation in the time interval between consecutive heartbeats, the measurement of which is a non-invasive method for assessing the autonomic status. The autonomic nervous system plays an important role in physiological situations, and in various pathological processes such as in cardiovascular diseases and viral infections. This study examined the cardiac autonomic responses, as measured by HRV before, after, and during coronavirus disease. In this study, we used beat interval data extracted from the Welltory app from 14 eligible subjects (9 men and 5 women) with a mean age (SD) of 44 (8.7) years. HRV analysis was performed through an assessment of time-domain indices (SDNN and RMSSD). Group analysis did not reveal any statistical difference between HRV metrics before, during, and after COVID-19. However, HRV at the individual level showed a statistically significant individual change during COVID-19 in some users. These data further support the usefulness of using individual-level HRV tracking for the detection of early diseases inclusive of COVID-19.

Autonomic Dysfunction during Acute SARS-CoV-2 Infection: A Systematic Review

“…Finally, 22 studies were included in this systematic review [29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36][37][38][39][40][41][42][43][44][45][46][47][48]94,95]. Details regarding the selection process are available in the PRISMA diagram (Figure 1).…”

“…Studies included in the systematic review-Refs. [29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36][37][38][39][40][41][42][43][44][45][46][47][48]94,95]. Abbreviations: COVID-19, Coronavirus disease 2019.…”

“…All the studies included in this review were observational: five with a cross-sectional design [31,36,40,46,47]; nine retrospective studies, including four case-control studies [37,41,44,94], two cohort studies [30,43], and three pre-post studies [33,35,95]; eight prospective studies that included seven cohort studies [29,32,34,38,39,42,45] and one pre-post study [48].…”

“…The number of COVID-19 patients ranged from 14 [29,95] to 42,752 [39], and in most cases, the diagnosis of SARS-CoV-2 infection was performed through a real-time polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) test [29][30][31][32][36][37][38][39][41][42][43][44][45]47,48,94]. In a minority of reports, COVID-19 diagnosis was self-reported by study participants [33,34,95], and in one study, both the RT-PCR test and/or a rise in anti-SARS-CoV-2 IgG levels were considered as diagnostic for COVID-19 [39]. Finally, three studies did not specify the type of test employed for the diagnoses of SARS-CoV-2 infection [35,40,46].…”

Alternation of the Autonomic Nervous System Is Associated With Pulmonary Sequelae in Patients With COVID-19 After Six Months of Discharge

“…The ANS plays an essential and irreplaceable role in maintaining the balance of body (Ulrich-Lai and Herman, 2009). HRV is the fluctuation in the time interval between consecutive heartbeats, the measurement of which is a noninvasive method of assessing the autonomic status (Ponomarev et al, 2021). Studies have found that HRV changes in systemic infections and that monitoring HRV can improve the diagnosis and prognosis of infections (Barnaby et al, 2019).…”