Korean J Psychosom Med.  2013 Jun;21(1):55-61.

Assessment of Autonomic Function in Alzheimer's Disease and Mild Cognitive Impairment Using Heart Rate Variability

• Seo H
• Kim H
• Lee KJ

Abstract

OBJECTIVES
Alzheimer's disease(AD) and mild cognitive impairment(MCI) affect several nervous structures involved with the autonomic nervous system. Association between neuropsychiatric deficits and heart rate variability has been observed. But cardiac autonomic function in AD has been scarcely studied and the results reported are conflicting. We investigated autonomic function in normal control, MCI, AD using heart rate variabil-ity(HRV) technique.
METHODS
Time and frequency-domain variability of 5-min R-R interval series was comparatively evaluated in 26 normal control subjects, 22 MCI subjects and 34 AD subjects. Analysis of variance(ANOVA) was used to compare the differences across groups. Correlations between MMSE-KC and HRV components were performed using Pearson's correlation coefficient.
RESULTS
No significant difference was observed among the groups in time, frequency-domain analysis of HRV (p>0.05). HRV were not found to be significantly correlated with the degree of cognitive impairment.
CONCLUSIONS
There were no differences in HRV with MCI, AD subjects when compared with normal controls. Further investigation is required to use HRV technique as noninvasive parameters of MCI and AD.

Keyword

Alzheimer's disease; Mild cognitive impairment; Heart rate variability

MeSH Terms

Alzheimer Disease
Autonomic Nervous System
Heart
Heart Rate
Mild Cognitive Impairment