Looking for biomarkers in physiological time series

Abstract

From the point of view of Complexity Sciences, health can be considered as the state of dynamical balance between robustness and adaptability to the changes in the environment. We consider that any human disease can be found in physiological time series by deviations from this point that reflects the loss of this balance. Thus, it is possible to find biomarkers based on non-invasive physiological parameters that characterize the critical healthy state, and could help as early warnings auxiliary for clinical diagnoses of different diseases. In this work, we present a time-domain analysis using the distribution moments, autocorrelation function, Poincaré diagrams, and the spectral analysis of interbeat intervals and blood pressure time series for control subjects of different age and gender, and diabetic patients. As a preliminary result, a statistical significant difference was found between health and disease in the statistical moments of blood pressure and heart rate variability that can be proposed as biomarkers.