Short term Heart Rate Variability in Rats

Abstract

Objective: A sustainable animal model is needed to detect Cardiovascular autonomic dysfunctions, which can be assessed by recording electrocardiogram and analysis of heart rate variability (HRV). Therefore, the present study tried to find out the duration for HRV analysis for reliable results.
Material and methods: Recording of Electroencephalogram (ECG) is reported in many articles. However, there is no information regarding the duration of ECG to be considered for the HRV analysis. Adult Wistar rat were used for a recording of ECG and HRV analysis. A combination of Ketamine 50 mg/kg and Xylazine 10 mg/kg was used for anesthésia in all the recordings. We analyzed the HRV parameters for all the records with 10 different durations starting from 1 minute to 10 minutes and compared.
Results and Discussion: It was observed that, ECG parameters were within normal range while the data from HRV analysis from different duration showed wide discrepancies depending on the duration of ECG recording used for HRV analysis.
Conclusion: The minimum duration of eight minutes of recording is likely to produce acceptable data for HRV parameters.