Resting heart rate associations with violence exposure and posttraumatic stress symptoms: sex differences in children

Abstract

Experiencing traumatic events in childhood can lead to increased risk of heart disease in adulthood. One of the ways this might happen is through long-lasting changes of the autonomic nervous system. This system is dysregulated in posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), which is twice as common in women compared to men. We explored whether resting heart rate (HR), a measure of autonomic functioning was associated with violence exposure in children, and whether this relationship was different in boys and girls. We also explored whether categorizing our sample into resting HR groups based off standardized norms for HR predicted differing relationships between violence exposure and posttraumatic stress symptoms (PTSS). Because childhood trauma and heart disease impact Black Americans at greater rates, we recruited our sample of 92 nine-year-old children from research centers in Atlanta, GA and Detroit, MI. We measured their resting HR, exposure to violence, and PTSS. We found that violence exposure was associated with lower HR overall, that girls showed greater PTSS associated with lower HR when compared to boys, and that boys with lower than normative HR showed a stronger association between violence exposure and PTSS compared to boys with normative HR. Future studies should examine potential mechanisms underlying this sex difference to best understand the long-term cardiovascular consequences for sex-related health disparities. Specifically, longitudinal studies may be able to help researchers understand how reduced HR during adolescents might lead to future cardiovascular disease and psychopathology.