A model for the genesis of arterial pressure Mayer waves from heart rate and sympathetic activity

Both theoretic models and cross-spectral analyses suggest that an oscillating sympathetic nervous outflow generates the low-frequency arterial pressure fluctuations termed Mayer waves. Fluctuations in heart rate also have been suggested to relate closely to Mayer waves, but empiric models have not assessed the joint causative influences of heart rate and sympathetic activity. Therefore, we constructed a model based simply upon the hemodynamic equation derived from Ohmʹs Law. With this model, we determined time relations and relative contributions of heart rate and sympathetic activity to the genesis of arterial pressure Mayer waves. We assessed data from eight healthy young volunteers in the basal state and in a high sympathetic state known to produce concurrent increases in sympathetic nervous outflow and Mayer wave amplitude. We fit the Mayer waves (0.05–0.20 Hz) in mean arterial pressure by the weighted sum of leading oscillations in heart rate and sympathetic nerve activity. This model of our data showed heart rate oscillations leading by 2–3.75 s were responsible for almost half of the variance in arterial pressure (basal R2=0.435±0.140, high sympathetic R2=0.438±0.180). Surprisingly, sympathetic activity (lead 0–5 s) contributed only modestly to the explained variance in Mayer waves during either sympathetic state (basal: ΔR2=0.046±0.026; heightened: ΔR2=0.085±0.036). Thus, it appears that heart rate oscillations contribute to Mayer waves in a simple linear fashion, whereas sympathetic fluctuations contribute little to Mayer waves in this way. Although these results do not exclude an important vascular sympathetic role, they do suggest that additional factors, such as sympathetic transduction into vascular resistance, modulate its influence.