From Electrocardiographic Data to Parameters of Heart Rate Variability in the Study of Workplace Stress Exposure and Cardiovascular Disease in Police Officers

• Activity Number: 190
• Type: Contributed
• Date/Time: Monday, August 1, 2011 : 10:30 AM to 12:20 PM
• Sponsor: Section on Statistics in Epidemiology
• Author(s): Anna Mnatsakanova*+ and Shengqiao Li and Cecil M. Burchfiel and James E. Slaven and Luenda E. Charles and John M. Violanti and Diane B. Miller and Michael E. Andrew
• Companies: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Indiana University and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and University of Buffalo and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
• Keywords: Heart rate variability ; Stress ; Cardiovascular disease ; Police health ; HRV ; ECG

Abstract

The loss of heart rate variability (HRV) is believed to be a significant and specific marker of dysfunction in the system that allows individuals to return to normal levels of physiological arousal after exposure to a stressor. This dysfunction in the stress response system is brought about by a number of factors, particularly highly intense and chronic stress. Police work produces these conditions. Furthermore, lower HRV has been associated with increased levels of psychological distress, cardiovascular disease (CVD), and metabolic disorders and is thought to provide the link between stress, psychological disorders and the development of CVD. If HRV provides this link then it should be associated concurrently with stress exposure, psychological disorders and subclinical CVD. The goals of this research are to examine the relationships between HRV, exposure to police work stressors and stress related disease. We will present the complex sequence of data pre-processing and analysis required to obtain parameters for studying HRV using short-term electrocardiographic data collected on 462 police officers from the Buffalo Cardio-metabolic Occupational Police Stress (BCOPS) study.