4.7 Review

Quantitative meta-analysis of heart rate variability finds reduced parasympathetic cardiac tone in women compared to men during laboratory-based social stress

Journal

NEUROSCIENCE AND BIOBEHAVIORAL REVIEWS
Volume 114, Issue -, Pages 194-200

Publisher

PERGAMON-ELSEVIER SCIENCE LTD
DOI: 10.1016/j.neubiorev.2020.04.005

Keywords

Heart rate variability; Psychosocial stress; Sex differences; Trier Social Stress Test

Funding

  1. National Institute of Mental Health of the National Institutes of Health [R21MH119642]

Ask authors/readers for more resources

Heart rate variability (HRV) is the inter-beat interval variation between consecutive heartbeats and an autonomic reflection of emotional regulatory abilities to flexibly respond to challenges, such as psychosocial stress. Whereas there are known sex differences in stress-induced hormonal and emotional responses, we identified a gap in our understanding of sex-specific autonomic cardiac control during stress. Thus, we assessed HRV prior to, during and after administration of a public speech task in healthy participants (n = 929) according to sex. Our meta-analysis found that during stress, women had lower HRV than men, with an overall Hedges' g of 0.29 (p < 0.0001) and 0.29 (p = 0.0003) for fixed and random effects models, respectively. We did not find significant heterogeneity or evidence of publication bias. Analyses of additional timepoints showed no baseline difference and marginally lower HRV in women during anticipation and recovery. Findings of the present meta-analysis confirm sex differences in stress-induced hyperarousal and form a justification for implementation of mechanistic studies evaluating gonadal hormones, their potent metabolites and pro-inflammatory cytokines as mediators of this relationship.

Authors

I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.

Reviews

Primary Rating

4.7
Not enough ratings

Secondary Ratings

Novelty
-
Significance
-
Scientific rigor
-
Rate this paper

Recommended

No Data Available
No Data Available