Impact of chronic psychosocial stress on autonomic cardiovascular regulation in otherwise healthy subjects

Elevated psychosocial stress might favor the occurrence of cardiovascular disease; however, mechanisms are incompletely understood. We hypothesized that patients (n=126; 44±1 years of age) referred to an internal medicine clinic because of symptoms related to chronic psychosocial stress would demonstrate signs of autonomic dysregulation compared with controls (n=132; 42±1 years of age). We used autoregressive spectral analysis of RR interval variability to obtain indirect markers of sympathetic and of vagal (respectively, low-frequency and high-frequency components, both expressed in normalized units) oscillatory modulation of sinoatrial node, as well as of sympathetic vasomotor regulation (low-frequency component of systolic arterial pressure variability) and of cardiac baroreflex sensitivity (α-index). Higher values of systolic and diastolic arterial pressure (respectively, 124±1 versus 117±1 mm Hg and 80±1 versus 75±1 mm Hg; both P