Exhausted Heart Rate Responses to Repeated Psychological Stress in Women With Major Depressive Disorder.

ABSTRACT: Past research links depression and blunted cardiac vagal reactivity to chronic stress. Yet, to our knowledge no experiment investigates heart rate (variability) responses to a repeated laboratory stressor in patients with depression. Repeated exposure may provide valuable information on stress reactivity in depression. Fifty-nine women (30 inpatients diagnosed with depression and 29 matched controls) underwent two consecutive runs of a mental arithmetic stress paradigm consisting of one baseline and two exposures to control, stress, and recovery phases of 5 min each, in a case-control design. Subjective stress and electrocardiography were recorded. Variance of heart rate (HR) and root mean square of successive RR interval differences (RMSSD) were analyzed using linear mixed models. Overall

SUBMITTER: Schiweck C 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9058080 | biostudies-literature | 2022

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature