Heart Rate Variability in 10 Year Olds -Normal and Intrauterine Growth Restricted

The objective of this work is to verify any correlation between HRV of children at 10 yrs and the Barker Theory and hypothesis which states that IUGR children are prone to coronary disease and hypertension in adulthood. Time domain analysis was done on the raw ECG after filtering and QRS detection. The mean, SDANN, Poincaré plots and the sample density distribution of RR were obtained for all 75 children. It was found that the lowest pvalue is 0.29, when comparing time domain measures between the two groups. This means, there is no significant difference between the IUGR and normal children at 10 years. Frequency domain analysis of RR by autoregressive model (AR), Fast Fourier Transform (FFT), and Lomb periodogram was performed for 10 min segments of all 75 children to find frequency components (LF, HF, and LF/HF). IUGR and normal comparison showed that the lowest p-value is 0.48, and for other variables (smoking, body mass index, sex, gestational period) the lowest p-value is 0.27. Frequency domain results support time domain findings that there is no significant difference between IUGR and normal children at 10 years.