ArticleSleep2018
Posttraumatic stress disorder diagnosis is associated with reduced parasympathetic activity during sleep in US veterans and military service members of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.
Article in Sleep, 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 22 papers.
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Who cites it
22 citing papers in PubMed, 52 citations in OpenAlex.
- Cumulative trauma, neural circuits, and burnout: an integrative model of healthcare worker post-traumatic stress syndromes.European journal of psychotraumatology · 2026Review
- Perceived sleep disturbance in healthy women with a history of childhood emotional abuse is not reflected in objective sleep measures or nocturnal heart rate variability.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2026Article
- Heart rate variability impairment during sleep in Veterans with rapid eye movement sleep behaviour disorder, traumatic brain injury, and post-traumatic stress disorder: an early potential window into autonomic dysfunction?Journal of sleep research · 2025Article
- High-Frequency Heart Rate Variability Is Prospectively Associated With Sleep Complaints in a Healthy Working Cohort.Psychosomatic medicine · 2024Article
- REM disruption and REM Vagal Activity Predict Extinction Recall in Trauma-Exposed Individuals.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2024Article
- Altered parasympathetic activity during sleep and emotionally arousing wakefulness in frequent nightmare recallers.European archives of psychiatry and clinical neuroscience · 2024Article
- Effects of Daily Posttraumatic Stress Disorder Symptoms on Heart Rate Variability.Psychosomatic medicine · 2024Article
- Insomnia, anxiety and related disorders: a systematic review on clinical and therapeutic perspective with potential mechanisms underlying their complex link.Neuroscience applied · 2024Review
- Nightmares and Sleep Disturbances in Children with PTSD: A Polysomnographic and Actigraphy Approach Evaluation.Journal of clinical medicine · 2023Article
- Neighborhood disadvantage is associated with sleep disturbance in a sample of trauma-exposed Veterans.Sleep health · 2023Article
- Emphasizing the Crosstalk Between Inflammatory and Neural Signaling in Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).Journal of neuroimmune pharmacology : the official journal of the Society on NeuroImmune Pharmacology · 2023Review
- Rapid eye movement sleep parasympathetic activity predicts wake hyperarousal symptoms following a traumatic event.Journal of sleep research · 2023Article
- The influence of sleep on fear extinction in trauma-related disorders.Neurobiology of stress · 2023Article
- Autonomic regulation during sleep in PTSD.Neurobiology of stress · 2022Article
- Article
- Effects of a forehead cooling device in veterans with chronic insomnia disorder and co-morbid medical and psychiatric conditions: a pilot study.Sleep & breathing = Schlaf & Atmung · 2021Article
- Association Between Postoperative Long-Term Heart Rate Variability and Postoperative Delirium in Elderly Patients Undergoing Orthopedic Surgery: A Prospective Cohort Study.Frontiers in aging neuroscience · 2021Article
- Sleep heart rate variability assists the automatic prediction of long-term cardiovascular outcomes.Sleep medicine · 2020Article
- Effect of a lactate-guided conditioning program on heart rate variability obtained using 24-Holter electrocardiography in Beagle dogs.PloS one · 2020Article
- Common pathways and communication between the brain and heart: connecting post-traumatic stress disorder and heart failure.Stress (Amsterdam, Netherlands) · 2019Review
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Authors and funding
5 authors at 3 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
Study Objectives: To determine whether high-frequency heart rate variability (HF-HRV) during sleep differs between those with and without posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) as a function of sleep type (non-rapid eye movement [NREM] vs. rapid eye movement [REM]), and to explore this relationship across successive sleep cycles. Participants with PTSD were hypothesized to have lower HF-HRV across both REM and NREM sleep. Methods: Sixty-two post-9/11 military veterans and service members completed self-report measures of sleep quality, insomnia severity, and disruptive nocturnal behaviors. Participants then completed a laboratory-based polysomnographic study night with concurrent HRV assessment. Results: Participants with PTSD (N = 29) had lower HF-HRV in overall NREM sleep relative to those without PTSD (N = 33) (F(1, 54) = 4.24, p = .04). Groups did not differ on overall HF-HRV during REM sleep. HF-HRV increased over the night for the sample as a whole during both NREM and REM sleep. PTSD status did not moderate the association between HF-HRV and sleep cycles. However, the PTSD group had lower HF-HRV in the first t(155) = 2.67, p = .008, and fourth NREM cycles, t(155) = 2.11, p = .036, relative to participants without PTSD. Conclusions: Findings suggest blunted parasympathetic modulation during NREM sleep in a young cohort of military veterans and service-members with PTSD. Findings are concerning considering the increased risk of incident cardiovascular events associated with impaired parasympathetic nervous system function. Reduced parasympathetic modulation may be one mechanism underlying the increased prevalence of cardiovascular disease (CVD) among veterans with PTSD.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.