Abstract
Background
Aerobic physical capacity plays an important role in reducing morbidity and mortality rates in subjects with cardiovascular diseases. This action is often related to an improvement in the autonomic modulation of heart rate variability (HRV). However, controversies remain regarding the effects of physical training on cardiac autonomic control in healthy subjects. Therefore, our objective was to investigate whether aerobic capacity interferes with the autonomic modulation of HRV and whether gender differences exist.
Methods
Healthy men and women (N=96) were divided into groups according to aerobic capacity: low (VO2: 22-38 ml/kg-1 min-1), moderate (VO2: 38-48 ml/kg-1 min-1) and high (VO2 >48 ml/kg-1 min-1.) We evaluated the hemodynamic parameters and body composition. The autonomic modulation of HRV was investigated using spectral analysis. This procedure decomposes the heart rate oscillatory signal into frequency bands: low frequency (LF=0.04-0.15Hz) is mainly related to sympathetic modulation, and high frequency (HF=0.15-0.5Hz) corresponds to vagal modulation.
Results
Aerobic capacity, regardless of gender, determined lower values of body fat percentage, blood pressure and heart rate. In turn, the spectral analysis of HRV showed that this parameter did not differ when aerobic capacity was considered. However, when the genders were compared, women had lower LF values and higher HF values than the respective groups of men.
Conclusion
The results suggest that aerobic physical capacity does not interfere with HRV modulation; however, the cardiac modulatory balance differs between genders and is characterized by a greater influence of the autonomic vagal component in women and by the sympathetic component in men.
Citation: Dutra SGV, Pereira APM, Tezini GCSV, Mazon JH, Martins-Pinge MC, Souza HCD (2013) Cardiac Autonomic Modulation Is Determined by Gender and Is Independent of Aerobic Physical Capacity in Healthy Subjects. PLoS ONE 8(10):
e77092.
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0077092
Editor: Hossein Ardehali, Northwestern University, United States of America
Received: May 13, 2013; Accepted: August 29, 2013; Published: October 3, 2013
Copyright: © 2013 Dutra et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Funding: This study was supported by the FAPESP (2011/07878-1). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.
Competing interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.
Description
The study explores gender differences in cardiac autonomic modulation related to aerobic capacity.