| Title | Analysis of heart rate variability to predict patient age in a healthy population. | ||
| Author | Corino, V D A; Matteucci, M; Mainardi, L T | ||
| Journal | Methods Inf Med | Publication Year/Month | 2007 |
| PMID | 17347754 | PMCID | -N/A- |
| Affiliation | 1.Department of Biomedical Engineering, Politecnico di Milano, Via Golgi 39, 20133 Milano, Italy. valentina.corino@polimi.it. | ||
OBJECTIVES: To estimate age of healthy subjects by means of the heart rate variability (HRV) parameters thus assessing the potentiality of HRV indexes as a biomarker of age. METHODS: Long-term indexes of HRV in time domain, frequency domain and non-linear parameters were computed on 24-hour recordings in a dataset of 63 healthy subjects (age range 20-76 years old). Then, as interbeat dynamics markedly change with age, showing a reduced HRV in older subjects, we tried to capture age-related influence on HRV by principal component analysis and to predict the subject age by means of a feedforward neural network. RESULTS: The network provides good prediction of patient age, even if a slight overestimation in the younger subjects and a slight underestimation in the older ones were observed. In addition, the important contribution of non-linear indexes to prediction is underlined. CONCLUSIONS: HRV as a predictor of age may lead to the definition of a new biomarker of aging.