Acute effect of non-invasive electrical stimulation of the vagus nerve upon blood pressure and heart rate variability in hypertensive individuals
International Journal of Development Research
Acute effect of non-invasive electrical stimulation of the vagus nerve upon blood pressure and heart rate variability in hypertensive individuals
Received 26th December, 2018, Received in revised form 20th January, 2019, Accepted 15th February, 2019, Published online 31st March, 2019.
Copyright © 2019, Hassan Musa Mohammad Aldaw. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Introduction: The auricular neuromodulation (ANM) of the vagus nerve can be performed through the stimulation of the inferior and superior conchae area (tragus) and in the outer ear. Objective: The aim of study was to verify the effects of noninvasive auricular electrical stimulation of the vagus nerve on HRV and Blood Pressure (BP) in hypertensive individuals. Methodology: A cross-sectional study, sample 30 hypertensive subjects. The experimental group - 15 individuals, 58.4 years old. Control group - 15 individuals, 60 years old. The intervention takes 40 minutes for each subject. The electrical stimulation of the vagus nerve was performed using a TENS unit. The stimulus was applied continuously for 20 minutes with a pulse width of 120 ms, pulse frequency of 25 Hz. Student's t test was used, p < 0.05 for statistical significance. Results: Intra group comparisons indicates a statistically significant difference (p 0.001). Inter group comparison demonstrated a statistically significant difference (p 0.001) for all variables. Conclusion: The results indicate that acute auricular neuromodulation of the vagus induces positive responses in HRV and BP in hypertensive individuals. The results obtained herein may justify further investigations into the effectiveness of this technique for the treatment of hypertensive individuals.
