Introduction: Time irreversibility is a characteristic feature of non-equilibrium, complex systems involving cardiovascular control mediated by autonomic nervous system. Its analysis in heart rate variability (HRV) signal represents a new approach to assess cardiovascular regulatory mechanisms. The purpose of this paper was to assess the changes in various time irreversibility indices during the orthostatic test (a balance of autonomic nervous system shifted towards sympathetic predominance). In addition, we tested the behaviour of the selected irreversibility indices in relation to different lengths of analysed data and their mutual dependence.
Methods: We examined the irreversibility of HRV time series obtained from 28 healthy young subjects recorded during 20 minutes in the supine position followed by 15 minutes in the standing position. We used three different time irreversibility indices - Porta's, Guzik's and Costa's indices (P%, G% and A, respectively). The proposed irreversibility indices were derived from data segments containing 300, 600 and 1000 beat-to-beat intervals.
Results: Two of three time irreversibility indices (P% and A) were sensitive to the shift in sympathovagal balance during the orthostatic challenge even when calculated from the shortest data length. Indices were relatively insensitive to data length - there were no significant differences in relation to data length. Despite the difference in algorithms for the calculation of indices P% and A, these are closely mathematically related and do not provide mutually independent information.
Conclusion: We conclude that heart rate irreversibility indices are sensitive to the changes in autonomic tone after the orthostatic challenge even when derived from the 300 interbeat intervals. Porta's index seems to be more sensitive to autonomic nervous balance shift compared to Guzik's index. Costa's index is closely related to P% and do not provide any additional information compared to other indices.
