Muscle Sympathetic Activity Kinetics during One‐leg Cycling in Men and Women with and without Heart Failure: Evidence for Preserved Cardiopulmonary Baroreflex Sympathoinhibition

Microneurographic recordings of muscle sympathetic nerve activity (MSNA) are generally analyzed over discrete epochs, usually in minutes. This is sufficient for determining resting sympathetic outflow but may obscure physiologically relevant information regarding temporal changes during an acute stress, such as exercise. To address this limitation, we applied a moving average to examine continuously the effects of one-leg cycling on MSNA in 22 participants with (n=11) and without (n=11) heart failure with reduced ejection fraction (HFrEF). MSNA burst frequency and incidence were acquired over an 8 minute period: 2 minutes of baseline, zeroload cycling, moderate intensity cycling (50% of VO2 peak), and recovery. MSNA was analyzed in 30 second epochs, advancing in five-second increments to create a 91 point overlapping moving average plot. Area under the curve analysis demonstrated that both MSNA burst frequency and incidence were higher in HFrEF than controls during zeroload and moderate intensity cycling ...