Heart rate variability using Poincaré plots in 10 year old healthy and intrauterine growth restricted children with reference to maternal smoking habits during pregnancy

This paper is looking at the effect of maternal smoking on 10 year intrauterine growth restricted compared to normal children. Lomb periodogram and Poincaré plots were used for this assessment. It is found that during waking, the LF/HF ratio showed IUGR children whose mothers did or did not smoke during pregnancy have elevated levels (2.66, 2.89) respectively, compared to the normal groups (2.23, 2.18). During sleep, the LF/HF ratio was (0.69, 0.79) for IUGR children, and (0.52, 0.52) for normal children. The Poincare analysis of long-term variability suggested that IUGR children whose mothers smoked during pregnancy have less long term HRV during sleep (SD2= 148.53ms) than their healthy counterparts whose mothers smoked (SD2= 182.87ms), p=0.02, and significantly lower short-term variability value was found for IUGR asthmatic children whose mothers smoked.