Low-frequency power of heart rate variability is not a measure of cardiac sympathetic tone but may be a measure of modulation of cardiac autonomic outflows by baroreflexes

Abstract

Power spectral analysis of heart rate variability has often been used to assess cardiac autonomic function; however, the relationship of low-frequency (LF) power of heart rate variability to cardiac sympathetic tone has been unclear. With or without adjustment for high-frequency (HF) power, total power or respiration, LF power seems to provide an index not of cardiac sympathetic tone but of baroreflex function. Manipulations and drugs that change LF power or LF:HF may do so not by affecting cardiac autonomic outflows directly but by affecting modulation of those outflows by baroreflexes. © 2011 The Authors. Journal compilation © 2011 The Physiological Society.