Investigation of heart rate variability response towards electroacupuncture stimulation: I pilot study in healthy volunteers

Abstract

Acupuncture treatment has been reported to reduce pain. It could inhibit sympathetic activation during mental stress which promotes relaxation and circulation of the functional state of the human body. However, the neurobiological basis of this effect is yet to be clearly stated. Thus, evaluation of electroacupuncture (EA) effects on heart rate variability (HRV) was conducted. Effect of EA was accessed by analyzing the HRV, which is a prominent non-invasive assessment method. The effect of HRV before and after EA and the relationship with acupoint stimulation based on extracted parameters from HRV was investigated. Electrocardiogram (ECG) signals of 29 healthy volunteers were acquired before and after EA stimulation at acupoint ST36 (Zu San Li). HRV is analyzed in both time-domain and frequency-domain to extract parameters such as heart rate (HR), SDNN, RMSSD, pNN50 and ratio of low frequency power over high frequency power (LF/HF). The result showed that EA stimulation has the effect in post-stimulation HRV with the significant decrease in mean (HR) and substantial increase in mean SDNN, RMSSD and pNN50. However, there were no changes observed in mean LF/HF ratio. It is noteworthy that LF/HF ratio shows difference in pre-stimulation and post-stimulation parameter.