Heart Rate Variability in HIV Patients, Diabetics, and Controls: The AGATAA Study

HIV infection can affect cardiac autonomic function. We aimed to compare heart rate variability in 29 HIV-infected patients using highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART), 28 naive-treatment HIV patients, and diabetics with controls. There was no difference in time index parameters among groups. The normalized power of the low-frequency component (LF) in naive patients of 39.9 (interquartile interval (IQ), 28.5–65.7) and diabetics of 42.9 (IQ, 14.5–57.7) were decreased compared with controls (67.5, IQ, 37.9–75.4). The normalized power of the high-frequency component (HF) in naives of 49.7 (IQ, 30.4–64.8), and diabetics of 53.1 (IQ, 34.5–72.2) were increased compared with controls (27.0, IQ, 19.0–57.3). Naive and diabetics also presented with lower LF/HF ratios (0.8 (IQ, 0.6–2.3), and 0.9 (IQ, 0.3–1.4),) compared with controls (2.3 (IQ, 0.8–3.3)). We can speculate that HAART improves autonomic imbalance in frequency domain indices because there was no difference between the HAART group and controls.