Cardiorespiratory Sleep Lab

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Wenli Wang

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Project Title: Autonomic Dysfunction in Middle-Aged and Older Adults with Sleep Disordered Breathing

Research Statement:

To test the hypothesis that spectral indices of heart rate variability are correlated with severity of sleep-disordered breathing (SDB), as quantified by the respiratory disturbance index (RDI), a total of 290 subjects, nonsmoking, normotensive, and free of cardiovascular disease and diabetes, and with sufficiently good quality electrocardiogram (ECG) signals were selected from the Sleep Heart Health Study. After a meticulous control for extensive confounding effects using both engineering and statistical methodologies, we identified significant gender differences in the effect of SDB severity on cardiac autonomic control, which may suggest a gender-oriented “set-point” for future SDB diagnoses and treatments.