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Heart rate variability in Parkinson disease and idiopathic REM sleep behavior disorder

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Abstract

Purpose

Heart rate variability, a marker of autonomic function modulation, is known to be blunted in Parkinson disease, although data remains conflicting and a putative modifying role of REM sleep behavior disorder persists unclarified.

Methods

We assessed ten patients with idiopathic REM sleep behavior disorder patients, 18 patients with Parkinson disease and REM behavior disorder and eight patients with Parkinson disease without REM sleep behavior disorder. Heart rate variability analysis was performed in 5-min epochs selected from wake, Non-REM and REM polysomnography records. We compared heart rate variability measures by stage between two sets of groups: Parkinson disease vs. idiopathic RBD and patients with vs. without RBD, by using repeated measures ANOVA.

Results

There were no heart rate variability differences between Parkinson disease and idiopathic REM sleep behavior disorder groups. There were significant stage vs. group interactions (p = 0.045) regarding the high frequencies components when comparing patients with and without REM sleep behavior disorder, with the former presenting lower values and attenuation of sleep stage variations.

Conclusion

Our study suggests that RBD is related with reduction in parasympathetic modulation of heart rate variability and blunting of sleep stage related variations.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Neurology, Hospital de Egas Moniz, Centro Hospitalar de Lisboa Ocidental (CHLO), Rua da Junqueira, 126, 1349-019, Lisbon, Portugal

    Paulo Bugalho, Marcelo Mendonça, Tânia Lampreia, Rita Miguel, Raquel Barbosa & Manuel Salavisa

  2. CEDOC, Chronic Diseases Research Center, NOVA Medical School, Lisbon, Portugal

    Paulo Bugalho & Marcelo Mendonça

Authors
  1. Paulo Bugalho
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  2. Marcelo Mendonça
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  3. Tânia Lampreia
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  4. Rita Miguel
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  5. Raquel Barbosa
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  6. Manuel Salavisa
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Paulo Bugalho.

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Conflict of interest

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Ethical approval

Patients and controls signed informed consent forms. The ethics committee of the institution approved the investigation protocol.

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Bugalho, P., Mendonça, M., Lampreia, T. et al. Heart rate variability in Parkinson disease and idiopathic REM sleep behavior disorder. Clin Auton Res 28, 557–564 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10286-018-0557-4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10286-018-0557-4

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