ECG Ventricular Repolarization Dynamics during Exercise: Temporal Profile, Relation to Heart Rate Variability and Effects of Age and Physical Health

Periodic repolarization dynamics (PRD) is a novel electrocardiographic marker of cardiac repolarization instability with powerful risk stratification capacity for total mortality and sudden cardiac death. Here, we use a time-frequency analysis approach to continuously quantify PRD at rest and during exercise, assess its dependence on heart rate variability (HRV) and characterize the effects of age (young adults/middle-aged adults/older adults), body mass index (non-overweight/overweight) and cardiorespiratory fitness level (fit/unfit). Sixty-six male volunteers performed an exercise test. RR and dT variabilities (RRV, dTV), as well as the fraction of dT variability unrelated to RR variability, were computed based on time-frequency representations. The instantaneous LF power of dT (P dTV ), representing the same concept as PRD, and of its RRV-unrelated component (P dTVuRRV ) were quantified. dT angle was found to mostly oscillate in the LF band. Overall, 50–70% of P dTV was linearly unrelated to RRV. The onset of exercise caused a sudden increase in P dTV and P dTVuRRV , which returned to pre-exercise levels during recovery. Clustering analysis identified a group of overweight and unfit individuals with significantly higher P dTV and P dTVuRRV values at rest than the rest of the population. Our findings shed new light on the temporal profile of PRD during exercise, its relationship to HRV and the differences in PRD between subjects according to phenotypic characteristics.