Nonlinear Heart Rate Variability Measures During the Oral Glucose Tolerance Test

Abstract

Heart rate variability (HRV) exhibits a different response to different external stimuli (emotional, auditory, etc). In this paper, HRV irregularity and correlations in short time scales were assessed after a sudden increase in plasma glucose concentration (a stimulus of glucose), using approximate entropy (ApEn) and short-term fluctuation (α1) of detrended fluctuation analysis, respectively, in people with metabolic syndrome and healthy control subjects. 5-min RR interval time series were extracted from ECG recordings acquired at five timed intervals (0, 30, . . . , 120 min) of an oral glucose tolerance test. We have found that, in fasting and 30 min after the glucose stimulus, people with metabolic syndrome showed statistically significantly greater values of ApEn than control, an indicative of a more irregular HRV. In addition, 60 min after the glucose stimulus, when plasma glucose concentration reaches its maximum value, HRV irregularity and short-term HRV correlation showed a reduction in people with metabolic syndrome. Further studies, using other nonlinear measures and a larger dataset, must be carried to characterize the response of HRV to the glucose stimulus.

Hyperglycemia Identification Using ECG in Deep Learning Era

“…Although the study was limited to just 1 person, it corroborated the results achieved by Fujimoto et al [ 28 ] where that ratio was first identified to be negatively correlated with blood glucose concentration. In 2017, Perpiñan et al [ 29 ] assessed the impact of taking a 75 g oral glucose testing in 25 subjects, 15 with metabolic syndrome, and 10 as a control group. They identified that the metabolic syndrome subjects presented significant higher HRV irregularity than the control group after 30 min of glucose intake.…”