Assessment of Cardiac Autonomic Function by Using Heart Rate Turbulence in Behcet’s Disease

Behcet’s disease (BD) is a chronic inflammatory disorder that can affect many systems in the body. Cardiac involvement increases the risk of cardiovascular mortality and occurs in 1%-5% of patients with BD. Ventricular arrythmias are believed to be the cause of this increased risk of cardiovascular mortality and it is also thought to be related with cardiac autonomic dysfunction. Heart rate turbulence (HRT) is a new predictor of cardiac autonomic activity. HRT is an independent and powerful predictor of mortality. In this study, we investigated the cardiac autonomic activity which can be determined by HRT in patients with BD. Forty patients with BD (20 men, mean age: 40 ± 9 years, range: 27-55 years) were diagnosed according to the International Study Group Criteria (ISGC) and gender and age matched healthy volunteers (20 men, mean age: 39 ± 8 years, range: 26-56 years) were included in this study. All of the participants (patients and controls) underwent 24 hours Holter electrocardiogram. HRT parameters, turbulence onset (TO) and turbulence slope (TS) were calculated with HRT (View Version 0.60-0.1 of Software Program). There were no significant differences in TO and TS values between patients with BD and control subject (TO-BD: 0.014 ± 0.03, TO-Control: 0.011 ± 0.04; TS-BD: 7.88 ± 4.9, TS-Control: 9.42 ± 6.7 respectively). Although increased cardiovascular mortality rates in BD have been shown in many studies, HRT values—detecting the risk of sudden death—do not seem to be altered in this disease.