DOI: 10.36347/sajb.2015.v03i12.011

Pages: 1040-1043

: Assessment of cardiac autonomic function (CAF) is an important non-invasive investigation in medical practice. This study aimed at assessing the effects of age and sex on autonomic cardiovascular indices. It was a cross-sectional descriptive study involving 204 apparently healthy adults between the ages of 18 and 40years who were residents of Obafemi Awolowo University community, Ile-Ife, Nigeria. Each of the participants performed five non-invasive cardiac autonomic function tests in series after excluding the systemic diseases by clinical evaluation. The five cardiac autonomic function tests were: Systolic Blood Pressure (SBP) response to change of posture (supine to erect), Diastolic Blood Pressure (DBP) response to sustained handgrip at 30% maximum voluntary contraction (MVC), Heart rate response to Valsalva maneouvre, Heart rate responses to Deep Breathing (HDB) and heart rate response to standing. The data obtained was analyzed with SPSS version17.0 software using descriptive statistics, correlation and Student t-test. A p value of < 0.05 was taken as statistically significant. Age was positively correlated with SBP response to posture, DBP response to sustained handgrip, Valsalva ratio and bradycardia ratio. Age was negatively correlated with tachycardia ratio, HDB, 30:15 ratio and resting heart rate. Significant gender difference was demonstrated in resting heart rate (t= -3.05, p = 0.003) and diastolic blood pressure response to sustained handgrip (t = 3.40, p=0.001).