Effect of Heart Rate Variations in the Menstrual Cycle Using Linear Methods

The variations in heart rate in various menstrual cycle phases have posed challenge to the cardiac automatic control. The Heart rate variability (HRV) is important parameter to decode the state of the heart during the sensitive period of menstrual cycle. There are limited studies which concentrated on detecting the HRV between menstrual cycle phases. Detecting HRV between phases is important to judge the condition of heart between phases. Thus, the objective is to investigate the effect of change of various phases of the menstrual cycle on autonomic modulations of heart rate using HRV analysis methods. In this paper, linear methods are applied on data set of 105 women recorded for different phases of menstrual cycle. The results concluded that pNN50 and RMSSD are more accurate methods in identifying the variations in hear rate between menstrual vs follicular phase and luteal vs menstrual phase of the menstrual cycle. the pNN50 method is more accurate in detecting the heart rate variations in luteal vs follicular phase.