Impact of exercise in high-humidity on heart rate variability and salivary oxidative stress in obese and lightweight asthmatic children.

BACKGROUND

Asthma and obesity are becoming increasingly common among children. Such conditions are known to negatively affect both cardiac autonomic function and oxidative stress. We therefore investigated the heart rate variability (HRV) and oxidative (malondialdehyde, MDA) response to exercise within a high humidity environment (~65%) in obese and lightweight asthmatic children.

METHODS

Forty-two children participated in this study and were categorized into four groups: obese asthmatic (OA, N.=10), obese non-asthmatic (ONA, N.=15), lightweight asthmatic (LA, N.=10), and lightweight non-asthmatic (LNA, N.=7). Time-domain and nonlinear indices of HRV were assessed at rest, during, and immediately after exercise. Further, saliva samples were collected immediately before and after exercise and analyzed for the determination of MDA.

RESULTS

HRV significantly decreased during and after exercise compared to baseline (P<0.05) with short-term fractal scaling exponent (α1) for the LNA group significantly smaller than the OA group after exercise (P<0.05). In contrast, the long-term fractal scaling exponent (α2) was greater after exercise compared to baseline and during exercise for all groups (P<0.05). MDA significantly decreased after exercise compared to baseline (P<0.05). We also found significant correlations after exercise between salivary levels of MDA with HRV components (i.e., RMSSD, SD1, and α2) in asthmatic groups (all P<0.05).

CONCLUSIONS

Our findings showed that exercise in high humidity environment does not significantly differentiate the autonomic response among children with various conditions (i.e., obese, asthmatic and healthy). However, a significant relationship was found between HRV and MDA in asthmatic children after exercise, highlighting the inter-relationship between oxidative stress markers and autonomic function in asthmatic children.