Central autonomic dysfunction delays recovery of Fingolimod induced heart rate slowing

Max J. Hilz, Tassanai Intravooth, Sebastian Moeller, Ruihao Wang, De Hyung Lee, Julia Koehn, Ralf A. Linker

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

23 Scopus citations

Abstract

Background: In multiple sclerosis (MS) patients, Fingolimod may induce prolonged heart-rate slowing which might be caused by MS-related central autonomic lesions. Objectives: To evaluate whether MS-patients with prolonged heart-rate slowing (> six hours) upon Fingolimod show cardiovascular-autonomic dysfunction before Fingolimod-initiation. Methods: Before Fingolimod-initiation, we recorded electrocardiographic RR-intervals (RRIs) and blood-pressure (BP) at rest, upon standing-up, during metronomic deep-breathing, Valsalva-maneuver, and "sustained-handgrip-exercise" in 21 patients with relapsing-remitting MS, and 20 healthy persons. We calculated sympathetic and parasympathetic cardiovascular parameters, including low- (LF) and high-frequency (HF) powers of RRI- and BP-oscillations, RRI-RMSSDs, RRI- and BP-changes during handgrip-exercise, parasympathetic heart-rate-slowing in relation to BP-overshoot after Valsalva-strain-release. We compared values of healthy persons and patients with and without prolonged heart-rate slowing after Fingolimod-initiation (ANOVA; significance: p<0.05). Results: Upon Fingolimod-initiation, 7/21 patients had prolonged HR-slowing. Before Fingolimod, these patients had higher resting BP and higher BP increase during handgrip-exercise than had the other participants (p<0.05). They did not reduce parasympathetic HR-parameters upon standing-up. After Valsalva-strain-release, their parasympathetic HR-slowing in response to BP-overshoot was four times higher than in the other participants (p<0.05). Conclusions: The autonomic cardiovascular dysfunction in MS-patients with delayed HR-re-acceleration upon Fingolimod-initiation suggests that MS-related central autonomic lesions compromise HR-re-acceleration upon Fingolimod. Trial Registration: German Clinical Trial Register DRKS00004548 http://drks-neu.uniklinik-freiburg.de/drks- web/setLocale-EN.do.

Original languageEnglish
Article numbere0132139
JournalPLoS ONE
Volume10
Issue number7
DOIs
StatePublished - 6 Jul 2015
Externally publishedYes

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