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The Association Between Heart Rate Variability and Quality of Life in Patients with Functional Somatic Syndrome and Healthy Controls

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Abstract

Functional somatic syndrome (FSS) includes a spectrum of somatic symptoms with insufficient medical explanation. Its underlying pathophysiology is considered to include dysfunctional stress-responsive systems or autonomic dysfunction. Among the autonomic dysfunction readouts, decreased heart rate variability (HRV) has been shown to be characteristic in patients with FSSs. However, its association with quality of life (QOL) has not been clearly examined. We examined the association between short-term resting HRV and QOL in patients with FSS (n = 47) and healthy controls (n = 28). The time domain parameters of HRV were mean heart rate per minute (HR), coefficient of variation of R–R intervals (CvRR) and root mean square of successive differences (RMSSD). The frequency domain parameters of HRV were low-frequency (LF) power and high-frequency (HF) power by power spectrum analysis. The Japanese version of the WHO’s QOL scale (WHOQOL-BREF) (WHO/QOL26) was used for the QOL assessment. There was a significant positive association between the RMSSD and HF power of HRV and all the QOL domains in patients with FSSs who had lower QOL scores on average than controls, while there was no association between HRV and any of the QOL domains in the control group. HF power was more dominantly associated with QOL than the other variables in patients with FSS based on the analysis with a multiple linear regression model. The present study elucidated that the HF power of HRV was dominantly associated with QOL in patients with FSSs who had lower QOL than controls. Vagal index of HRV could be a valuable indicator of the pathological condition and a significant predictor of health-related QOL in patients with FSSs.

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Data Availability

The datasets during and/or analyzed during the current study available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

Editorial support, in the form of medical writing, assembling tables and creating high-resolution images based on authors’ detailed directions, collating author comments, copyediting, fact-checking, and referencing, was provided by Editage, Cactus Communications.

Funding

This work was supported by JSPS KAKENHI Grant Numbers JP17K09335, JP20K03462 and JST COI Grant number JPMJCE1310.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Medicine, Kagawa University, 1750-1 Ikenobe, Miki-cho , Kida-gun, Kagawa Prefecture, 761-0793, Japan

    Kenji Kanbara

  2. Department of Psychosomatic Medicine, Kansai Medical University, Osaka, Japan

    Kenji Kanbara, Hideaki Hasuo & Tetsuya Abe

  3. Technology Division, Panasonic Corporation, Osaka, Japan

    Yukihiro Morita

Authors
  1. Kenji Kanbara
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  2. Yukihiro Morita
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  3. Hideaki Hasuo
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  4. Tetsuya Abe
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Contributions

KK designed and directed the project and YM developed the project. KK carried out the experiment. YM and KK performed the analysis of the data. All authors discussed the results and contributed to the final manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Kenji Kanbara.

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The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

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All subjects provided informed consent for inclusion in the study, and the study was approved by the ethical committee of Kansai Medical University.

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The authors affirm that research participants provided informed consent for publication of the statistical results of the data.

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Kanbara, K., Morita, Y., Hasuo, H. et al. The Association Between Heart Rate Variability and Quality of Life in Patients with Functional Somatic Syndrome and Healthy Controls. Appl Psychophysiol Biofeedback 46, 279–285 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10484-021-09515-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10484-021-09515-1

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