Diminished heart rate complexity in adolescent girls: a sign of vulnerability to anxiety disorders?

ABSTRACT

Background and Objectives: Diminished heart rate variability has been found to be associated with high anxiety symptomatology. Since adolescence is the period of onset for many anxiety disorders, this study aimed to determine sex- and anxiety-related differences in heart rate variability and complexity in adolescents.

Methods: We created four groups according to sex and anxiety symptomatology: high-anxiety girls (n = 24) and boys (n = 25), and low-anxiety girls (n = 22) and boys (n = 24) and recorded their cardiac function while they performed regular school activities. A series of two-way (sex and anxiety) MANOVAs were performed on time domain variability, frequency domain variability, and non-linear complexity.

Results: We obtained no multivariate interaction effects between sex and anxiety, but highly anxious participants had lower heart rate variability than the low-anxiety group. Regarding sex, girls showed lower heart rate variability and complexity than boys.

Conclusions: The results suggest that adolescent girls have a less flexible cardiac system that could be a marker of the girls’ vulnerability to developing anxiety disorders.

KEYWORDS:

• Heart rate
• adolescence
• sex
• anxiety
• complexity

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (MINECO) [grant number PSI2012-34780]; by ‌‌the Spanish ‌Ministry of ‌Economy and ‌Competitiveness‌‌‌‌ ‌‌(MINE‌CO)‌, the State Research Agency (AEI) and the European Regional Development Funds (ERDF) [grant number PSI2016-78403-P (MINECO/AEI/ERDF, EU)]; by the SOIB (Service of Occupation of the Balearic Islands), the European Social Fund (ESF) and Youth Guarantee from the Spanish Ministry of Employment and Social Security [ref. number JQ-SP-49/17].