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Original investigation
Heart rate variability predicts 8-year risk of cardiovascular disease: The Taiwan Bus Driver Cohort Study (TBDCS)
Wei-Te Wu
National Health Research Institutes
Corresponding Author
ORCiD: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5054-8590
License:
This work is licensed under a CC BY 4.0 License. Read Full License
Background: Characteristics of professional drivers like irregular work shifts, long hours of driving, sedentary restricted postures, long-term sleep deficiency, increase the probability of developing cardiovascular disease (CVD). Therefore, early monitoring CVD risk is important to device preventive measures in the workplace.
Objective: This cohort study used to evaluate the effectiveness of noninvasive heart rate variability (HRV) analysis to assess the 8-year risk of CVD events.
Methods: Personal and working characteristics were collected before biochemistry examinations and 5-min HRV tests from Taiwan Bus Driver Cohort Study (TBDCS) in 2005. Then, this cohort was linked to Taiwan’s National Health Insurance Research Database (NHIRD) to obtain subjects’ medical information. This study eventually identified 161 drivers with CVD and 627 without from 2005 to 2012. Cox proportional hazards model were performed to estimate the hazard ratio for CVD.
Results: Subjects with overall CVD had lower the standard deviation of NN intervals (SDNN) than their counterparts. Even after adjusting for risk factors, SDNN index have a strong association with overall CVD. Using median split for SDNN, hazard ratio of overall CVD was 1.83 (95% CI 1.10–3.04) in model 1 and 1.87 (95% CI 1.11–3.13) in model 2. Furthermore, Low frequency (LF) index associated with risk of overall CVD in the continuous approach. For hypertensive disease, the SDNN index was associated with increased risks in both the continuous and dichotomized approaches. When Root Mean Square of the Successive Differences (RMSSD), high frequency (HF), and LF as a continuous variable, the significant association with hypertensive disease were observed.
Conclusions: This cohort study suggests that SDNN and LF levels are useful for predicting 8-year CVD risk, especially for hypertensive disease. Further research is required to determine preventive measures for modifying HRV dysfunction as well as to investigate whether these interventions could reduce CVD risk in professional drivers.
Keywords
Early monitoring, Heart rate variability, Cardiovascular diseases, Professional bus driver, Cohort study
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This is a preprint. It has not completed peer review.
Original investigation
Heart rate variability predicts 8-year risk of cardiovascular disease: The Taiwan Bus Driver Cohort Study (TBDCS)
Wei-Te Wu
National Health Research Institutes
Corresponding Author
ORCiD: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5054-8590
Badges
Prescreen
This manuscript passed our Prescreen assessment
Complete author information
Appropriate declaration statements
Potential risks to human health
Prescreen
History
CURRENT STATUS: Posted
Version 1
Posted 22 Jun, 2020
No community comments so far
Metrics
Comments: 0
PDF Downloads: ...
HTML Views: ...
Subject Areas
Cardiac & Cardiovascular Systems
License:
This work is licensed under a CC BY 4.0 License. Read Full License
Background: Characteristics of professional drivers like irregular work shifts, long hours of driving, sedentary restricted postures, long-term sleep deficiency, increase the probability of developing cardiovascular disease (CVD). Therefore, early monitoring CVD risk is important to device preventive measures in the workplace.
Objective: This cohort study used to evaluate the effectiveness of noninvasive heart rate variability (HRV) analysis to assess the 8-year risk of CVD events.
Methods: Personal and working characteristics were collected before biochemistry examinations and 5-min HRV tests from Taiwan Bus Driver Cohort Study (TBDCS) in 2005. Then, this cohort was linked to Taiwan’s National Health Insurance Research Database (NHIRD) to obtain subjects’ medical information. This study eventually identified 161 drivers with CVD and 627 without from 2005 to 2012. Cox proportional hazards model were performed to estimate the hazard ratio for CVD.
Results: Subjects with overall CVD had lower the standard deviation of NN intervals (SDNN) than their counterparts. Even after adjusting for risk factors, SDNN index have a strong association with overall CVD. Using median split for SDNN, hazard ratio of overall CVD was 1.83 (95% CI 1.10–3.04) in model 1 and 1.87 (95% CI 1.11–3.13) in model 2. Furthermore, Low frequency (LF) index associated with risk of overall CVD in the continuous approach. For hypertensive disease, the SDNN index was associated with increased risks in both the continuous and dichotomized approaches. When Root Mean Square of the Successive Differences (RMSSD), high frequency (HF), and LF as a continuous variable, the significant association with hypertensive disease were observed.
Conclusions: This cohort study suggests that SDNN and LF levels are useful for predicting 8-year CVD risk, especially for hypertensive disease. Further research is required to determine preventive measures for modifying HRV dysfunction as well as to investigate whether these interventions could reduce CVD risk in professional drivers.
Figure 1