Earl E. Bakken

Non-photic solar associations of heart rate variability and myocardial infarction

Abstract Alignment of serial epidemiological, physiological, including electrocardiographic data with variations in galactic cosmic rays, geomagnetic activity, and atmospheric pressure suggests the possibility of links among these physical environmental variations and health risks, such as myocardial infarctions and ischemic strokes, among others. An increase in the incidence of myocardial infarction in association with magnetic storms, reported by several investigators from Russia, Israel, Italy and Mexico, accounts in Minnesota for a 5% ( 220 cases / year ) increase in mortality during years of maximal solar activity by comparison with years of minimal solar activity. Magnetic storms are also found to decrease heart rate variability (HRV), indicating a possible mechanism since a reduced HRV is a prognostic factor for coronary artery disease and myocardial infarction. Longitudinal electrocardiographic monitoring for a week or much longer spans in different geographic locations, notably in the auroral oval, further suggests that the decrease in HRV affects spectral regions other than that around 3.6 s (0.15– 0.40 Hz ), reportedly associated with the parasympathetic nervous system. Differences in some associations are observed from solar cycle to solar cycle, and as a function of solar cycle stage, a finding resolving controversies. Coordinated physiological and physical monitoring, the scope of an international project on the Biosphere and the Cosmos, seeks reference values for a better understanding of environmental effects on human health and for testing the merit of space weather reports that could prompt countermeasures in space and on earth. Physiological data being collected systematically worldwide and morbidity/mortality statistics from causes such as myocardial infarction and stroke constitute invaluable data bases for assessing changes within the physiological range, for detecting environmental effects and for recognizing endogenous as well as exogenous disease-risk syndromes. Timely and timed intervention may then be instituted to lower risk, in preference to exclusive current focus on treating overt disease. These chronodiagnostics are particularly important for those venturing into regions away from hospitals, such as astronauts in space.

From various kinds of heart rate variability to chronocardiology

Abstract We wish to show that cardiologic variability can be examined with benefit by the concepts and computer methods of chronobiology, the science (logos) of lifes (bios) time (chronos) structure. From heart rate data in a recent article, 1 dynamic end points are obtained to quantify health. 2 On a group basis, when conventional end points applied to 2 sets of electrocardiographic records fail to separate for sudden adult death, chronobiologic end points already do so. 2 Novel information not obtained by conventional location or dispersion indexes 3 can be provided by the computation of the circadian and other amplitudes. 4 Beyond sudden death after myocardial infarction, the importance of these amplitudes has been demonstrated in several additional cases of cardiologie interest 2 : (1) the amplitudes of several rhythmic components of systolic or diastolic blood pressure separate groups of human newborns with a positive versus negative family history of high blood pressure or cardiovascular diseases, or both, when the mean based on the same data does not do so; (2) in children ≥9 years old, the circadian amplitude and acrophase of blood pressure, but not the mean, separate groups at low or high risk of developing high blood pressure later in life; (3) at 15 years of age, the circadian amplitude of diastolic blood pressure, but not the mean, correlates with the thickness of the interventricular septum of the heart.

The theoretical and experimental bases of the frontal plane ventricular gradient and its spatial counterpart

Abstract 1. 1. The theoretical basis of the ventricular gradient concept is re-examined. 2. 2. The effect of changing pathway of ventricular activation is analyzed in Wilsons experiment and in a corresponding human case. 3. 3. Normal limits for the magnitude of the ventricular gradient are calculated and tabulated for a group of 107 healthy men and for corresponding material available from the literature. 4. 4. Analysis of the literature reveals that very few cases even with advanced myocardial involvement exceed these normal limits. 5. 5. No correlation is found between the manifest QRS and T areas in any of three different experimental normal groups even when the area measurements are made by means of an electronic integrator, which is described in appendix II. 6. 6. Analysis of the existing literature on the spatial gradient reveals that no adequate method of measurement has yet been described. 7. 7. A simple method for measuring the spatial ventricular gradient based on determination of a null point for the QRS-T area at the fifth intercostal space is developed. 8. 8. Some representative normal values of the spatial ventricular gradient and its components are given. 9. 9. A strong positive correlation between the spatial QRS and T areas is found in contrast with the negative correlation implied by conventional ventricular gradient theory. 10. 10. A theoretically more satisfactory definition of a spatial ventricular gradient is proposed based on the stereovector theory. 11. 11. Technical electronic means for instananeous determination of the spatial ventricular gradient are described. 12. 12. The results do not encourage further use of the frontal plane ventricular gradient in clinical electrocardiography. The value of its spatial correlate remains to be proved.

Chronobiologic blood pressure assessment with a cardiovascular summary, the sphygmochron

Chronobiology deals with rhythmic patters that occur in all forms of life [1–5, 7–33, 35–38, 40–44, 47]. Virtually all organisms exhibit approximately daily (circadian) cycles. In human beings, prominent rhythms are found in blood pressure, circulatory pulse, body core and surface temperature and in chemical variables of blood, urine, and tissues. (Fig. 1). The medical section of this new science explores the relationships of rhythms to prediction, prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of diseases. Several decades of research worldwide have established that medical diagnoses can be subject to a much higher proportion of false positives (e. g., “office hypertension”) and false negatives (e. g., “odd-hour” hypertension) when only single samples are taken at arbitrary times of the day instead of taking rhythms into account. Radiation, chemotherapy, and other treatments have been shown to have markedly different efficacy and safety depending upon the pattern of administration within the day. Without modern engineering tools, chronobiology had to rely on manual measurement series that were cumbersome to collect and required methods of analysis that were not generally available. Modern bioengineering with microcomputers can bring the findings of chronobiology on circadian and other rhythms into the mainstream of medicine. Chronobiology can thus provide new dimensions to an individualized, positive assessment of health complementing the current negative approach relying solely on the absence of unusual values or overt disease.

Multiple resonances among time structures, chronomes, around and in us. Is an about 1.3-year periodicity in solar wind built into the human cardiovascular chronome?

Aims: Velocity changes in the solar wind recorded by satellite (IMP8 and Wind) are characterized by a solar cycle–dependent ∼1.3-year component. The presence of any ∼1.3-year component in human blood pressure (BP) and heart rate (HR) and in mortality from myocardial infarction (MI) is tested and its relative prominence compared to the 1.0-year variation. Materials and Methods: Around-the-clock manual or automatic BP and HR measurements from four subjects recorded over 5–35 years and a 29-year record of mortality from MI in Minnesota were analyzed by linear–nonlinear rhythmometry. Point and 95% confidence interval (CI) estimates were obtained for the ∼1.3-year period and amplitude. The latter is compared with the 1.0-year amplitude for BP and HR records concurrent to the solar data provided by one of the authors (JDR). Results: An ∼1.3-year component is resolved nonlinearly for MI, with a period of 1.23 (95% CI: 1.21, 1.26) years. This component was invariably validated with statistical significance for BP and HR by linear rhythmometry. Nonlinearly, the 95% CI for the 1.3-year amplitude did not overlap zero in 11 of the 12 BP and HR series. Given the usually strong synchronizing role of light and temperature, it is surprising that 5 of the 12 cardiovascular series had a numerically larger amplitude of the 1.3-year versus the precise 1.0-year component. The beating of the ∼1.3-year and 1.0-year components was shown by gliding spectra on actual and simulated data. Discussion and Conclusion: The shortest 5-year record (1998–2003) revealed an ∼1.3-year component closer to the solar wind speed period characterizing the entire available record (1994–2003) than the value for the concurrent 5-year span. Physiological variables may resonate with nonphotic environmental cycles that may have entered the genetic code during evolution.

Feedsidewards: Intermodulation (Strictly) among Time Structures, Chronomes, in and around Us, and Cosmo‐vasculo‐neuroimmunity: About Ten‐yearly Changes: What Galileo Missed and Schwabe Found

Abstract: The spectrum of biological rhythms is extended far beyond circadians, circannuals, and ultradians, such as 1.5‐hourly melatonin and 8‐hourly endothelin‐1 (ET‐1) rhythms by statistics of natality, growth, morbidity, and mortality, some covering decades or centuries on millions of individuals. These reveal infradian cycles to be aligned with half‐weekly rhythms in ET‐1, weekly and half‐yearly ones in melatonin, and even longer‐about 50‐, about 20‐, and about 10‐year cycles found in birth statistics. About daily, weekly, yearly, and ten‐yearly patterns are also found in mortality from myocardial infarctions; the 10‐yearly ones are also in heart rate and its variability; in steroid excretion, an aspect of resistance, for example, to bacteria; and in the genetic changes of the bacteria themselves. Automatic physiological measurements cover years and, in one case, cover a decade; the latter reveal an about 10‐year (circadecennial) cycle. ECGs, covering months beat‐to‐beat, reveal circaseptans, gaining prominence in response to magnetic storms or after coronary artery bypass grafting. A spectrum including cycles from fractions of 1 Hz to circasemicentennians is just one element in biological time structures, chronomes. Chaos, trends, and any unresolved variability are the second to fourth elements of chronomes. Intermodulations, feedsidewards, account for rhythmically and thus predictably recurring quantitative differences and even for opposite treatment effects of the same total dose(s) of (1) immunomodulators inhibiting or stimulating DNA labeling of bone in health or speeding up versus slowing down a malignant growth and thus shortening or lengthening survival time, or (2) raising or lowering blood pressure or heart rate in the vascular aspect of the bodys defense. Latitude‐dependent competing photic and nonphotic solar effects upon the pineal are gauged by alternating yearly (by daylight) and half‐yearly (by night) signatures of circulating melatonin at middle latitudes and by half‐yearly signatures at noon near the pole. These many (including novel near 10‐yearly) changes, for example, in 17‐ketosteroid excretion, heart rate, heart rate variability, and myocardial infarction in us and those galactic, solar, and geophysical ones around us have their own special signatures and contribute to a cosmo‐vasculo‐immunity and, if that fails, to a cosmo(immuno?) pathology.

Circadian and extracircadian exploration during daytime hours of circulating corticosterone and other endocrine chronomes

During 7 consecutive days, blood and several tissues were collected during daytime working hours only, three times per day at 4-h intervals from inbred Wistar rats, which had been previously standardized for 1 month in two rooms on a regimen of 12 h of light (L) alternating with 12 h of darkness (LD12:12). In one room, lights were on from 09:00 to 21:00 and in the other room, lights were on from 21:00 to 09:00 (DL12:12; reversed lighting regimen). This setup provides a convenient design to study circadian and extracircadian variations over long (e.g., 7-day) spans. Prior checking of certain circadian rhythms in animals reared in the room on reversed lighting (DL) as compared with animals in the usual (LD) regimen provided evidence that the 180 degrees phase-shift had occurred. These measurements were limited to the circadian (and not extended to infradian) variation. As marker rhythm, the core temperature of a subsample of rats was measured every 4 h around the clock (by night as well as by day) before the start of the 7-day sampling. An antiphase of the circadian rhythm in core temperature was thus demonstrated between rats in the LD vs. DL rooms. A sex difference in core temperature was also found in each room. A reversed rhythm in animals kept in DL and an antiphase between rats kept in DL vs. LD was again shown for the circulating corticosterone rhythm documented in subsamples of 8 animals of each sex sampled around the clock during the first approximately 1.5 day of the 7-day sampling. The findings were in keeping with the proposition that sampling rats at three timepoints 4 h apart during daytime from two rooms on opposite lighting regimens allows the assessment of circadian changes, the daytime samples from animals kept on the reversed lighting regimen accounting for the samples that would have to be obtained by night from animals kept in the room with the usual lighting regimen. During the 7-day-long follow-up, circadian and extracircadian spectral components were mapped for serum corticosterone, taking into account the large day-to-day variability. A third check on the synchronization of the animals to their respective lighting regimen was a comparison (and a good agreement) between studies carried out earlier on the same variables and the circadian results obtained on core temperature and serum corticosterone in this study as a whole. The present study happened to start on the day of the second extremum of a moderate double magnetic storm. The study of any associations of corticosterone with the storm is beyond our scope herein, as are the results on circulating prolactin, characterized by a greater variability and a larger sex difference than corticosterone. Sex differences and extracircadian aspects of prolactin and endothelin determined in the same samples are reported elsewhere, as are results on melatonin. Prior studies on melatonin were confirmed insofar as a circadian profile is concerned by sampling on two antiphasic lighting regimens, as also reported elsewhere. Accordingly, a circadian map for the rat will eventually be extended by the result of this study and aligned with other maps with the qualification of the unassessed contribution in this study of a magnetic storm.

Geomagnetics and society interact in weekly and broader multiseptans underlying health and environmental integrity

Evidence for the ubiquity and partial endogenicity of about-weekly (circaseptan) components and multiples and/or submultiples thereof (the multiseptans) accumulates as longer and denser records become available. Often attributed to a mere response to the social schedule, circaseptan components now have been documented to characterize environmental variables related to primarily non-photic solar effects. Plausibly, like circadians, circaseptans are anchored in genomes, from bacteria to humans, via both an internal and external evolution. If so, circaseptans, like circadians, may be found in the absence of a 7-day schedule, whereas the social schedule may play a synchronizing role and be responsible for the detection of prominent weekly variations in population statistics. The wobbliness of multiseptans and other components of some environmental time structures (chronomes) may correspond to the wobbliness of multiseptans found in cardiovascular morbidity statistics. Here, the latter stem primarily, but not exclusively, from an extensive database on the incidence of daily calls for an ambulance in Moscow, Russia from 1979-1981. A modulation of multiseptans and other chronome components of both environmental and biological variables by the about 11-year solar activity cycle (and of other low-frequency signals reviewed elsewhere) may account for prior controversies and scepticism about a variety of non-photic effects on biota. This is notably the case when relatively short series are analyzed without consideration of effects of unassessed long-term variations; this is the task of the new field of chronomics. In the spectral element of the chronomes of geophysical and biospherical variability, there are natural near weeks,apart from any precise 7-day periodicity.

Chronomics, neuroendocrine feedsidewards and the recording and consulting of nowcasts--forecasts of geomagnetics.

A multi-center four-hourly sampling of many tissues for 7 days (00:00 on April 5-20:00 to April 11, 2004), on rats standardized for 1 month in two rooms on antiphasic lighting regimens happened to start on the day after the second extremum of a moderate double magnetic storm gauged by the planetary geomagnetic Kp index (which at each extremum reached 6.3 international [arbitrary] units) and by an equatorial index Dst falling to -112 and -81 nT, respectively, the latter on the first day of the sampling. Neuroendocrine chronomes (specifically circadian time structures) differed during magnetically affected and quiet days. The circadian melatonin rhythm had a lower MESOR and lower circadian amplitude and tended to advance in acrophase, while the MESOR and amplitude of the hypothalamic circadian melatonin rhythm were higher during the days with the storm. The circadian parameters of circulating corticosterone were more labile during the days including the storm than during the last three quiet days. Feedsidewards within the pineal-hypothalamic-adrenocortical network constitute a mechanism underlying physiological and probably also pathological associations of the brain and heart with magnetic storms. Investigators in many fields can gain from at least recording calendar dates in any publication so that freely available information on geomagnetic, solar and other physical environmental activity can be looked up. In planning studies and before starting, one may gain from consulting forecasts and the highly reliable nowcasts, respectively.

Geographic and extraterrestrial aspects of morbidity and/or mortality patterns from myocardial infarction and stroke

Two authors (M.K. and M.M.) provided insight into a manuscript submitted by them elsewhere for publication and kindly offered for meta-analysis data on the monthly incidence from January 1989 up to December 2004, of 6094 cerebral infarctions, 414 intracerebral and 277 subarachnoid hemorrhages, cases admitted at the Neurological Clinic in Nové Zamky, Slovakia. Spectral components with a period exceeding (beyond = trans) the length of the calendar year--transyears--reported originally by M.K. and M.M. are here also documented linearly on original data without and after detrending by the fit of first- or second-order polynomials. For intracerebral and subarachnoidal hemorrhage, the zero-amplitude (no-rhythm) assumption is rejected (P < 0.05, not corrected for multiple testing) for the transyear but not for a precise 1.0-year trial period. As reported earlier by M.K. and M.M., the transyears amplitude is larger than the calendar years amplitude for all three series of stroke incidence in Slovakia. The putative importance of the new findings stems from earlier and new analyses revealing other spectral components that are presumed signatures of magnetoperiodisms, e.g. about 50- and 7-year components in about five decades of diagnostically unqualified, pooled data on stroke in Minnesota. There is, however, the danger of relatively small numbers providing artifacts for loosely defined transyears. The original cosinor approach by M.K. and M.M., testing anticipated periods, had its strength. The observation of a quindecadal component in mortality from strokes in Minnesota supports the presence of signatures of effects from extraterrestrial space in acute human pathology such as strokes, myocardial infarctions and sudden cardiac death. Magnetoperiodic mechanisms remain to be investigated further as added strokes accumulate in Nové Zamky and greater Slovakia as well as for sudden cardiac death where transyears have been documented in the Czech Republic, in Arkansas and particularly in Minnesota, but not elsewhere (as yet?). This study is also a plea for worldwide access to morbidity, mortality and natality data that constitute a largely unexploited treasure, brought to the fore mainly for relatively short-term comparisons of the effect of interventions against the fiction of imaginary baselines.