Abstract:

Objectives: It has been that increased sempathic nerve system activity due to infalammatory stress and it causes disturbance of heart rate variability (HRV) in rheumatoid arthritis (RA). In this study, it was assessed cardiac sempatovagal activity by noninvasive parameters such as HRV in patients with RA. Materials and methods: 49 patients with RA and age-matched 28 healthy subjects as control group were enrolled to this study. Clinical and laboratory parameters of all subjects were assessed and 24-hour electrocardio-graphic Holter monitoring were performed to all of them. Results: Minimum, maximum and average heart rate were significantly higher while the average RR interval were significantly lower in patients with RA when compared with controls. In addition, among time domain HRV parameters, SDNN, SDANN and triangular index were significantly lower in patients with RA (p)

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