Comparison of one- and three-lead ECG to measure cardiac intervals and differentiate drug-induced multi-channel block.

INTRODUCTION

FDA has established initiatives to characterize clinical and non-clinical biomarkers to enable more precise prediction of proarrhythmia risk based upon knowledge of drug effect on multiple cardiac ion channels (Colatsky et al., 2016). The FDA has recently demonstrated superiority of early ventricular repolarization interval (JTp) in differentiating pure hERG block from multi-channel block in human subjects. Preclinical studies often acquire a single lead ECG, whereas FDA measurements of JTp were derived ​from a spatial vectorcardiogram computed using multiple leads. This study compares QT subintervals derived from single lead vs. spatial magnitude (SM) ECG and contrasts information obtained from multilead and single lead ECGs in the canine model.

METHODS

Four beagle dogs were instrumented with 3-lead Holter monitors to acquire continuous surface ECG recordings for three consecutive days. A 24-h baseline recording was obtained on day 1 followed by administration of dofetilide on day 2 and atropine and dofetilide on day 3. Lead II and SM ECGs were automatically analyzed using the AE-1010 Rhythm Express™ (RE) software (VivaQuant, St. Paul, MN USA) without manual intervention or editing of the results (auto). Five-minute averages of beat-to-beat intervals measured on each lead were compared for agreement assessed by Bland-Altman (BA) statistics and consistency measured as the repeatability standard deviation (SD) from 5-min intervals. The fully automated results were screened by an operator (semi-automated) and compared to automated results.

RESULTS

JTp and TpTe measured using SM lead are less sensitive to changes in posture and respiration related changes in T-wave morphology. The 24-h repeatability SD of 5-min subintervals for JTp and TpTe over the three days was improved by 15.4% and 15.5% respectively with the highest improvements of 23.3% for JTp on day 2 and 25.3% for TpTe on day 3. Drug induced changes in QTcV, QRS, RR, and PR intervals were qualitatively similar between the SM lead and Lead II and in close agreement based on BA statistics. Semi-automated and automated measurements from SM Lead were in close agreement based on BA statistics.

DISCUSSION

Single lead ECG is adequate for PR, RR, QRS, and QT, but produces different and more variable results when assessing QT subintervals relative to the SM lead. Close agreement between automated and semi-automated measurements demonstrates Rhythm Express accuracy and the potential to streamline interval analysis.