REVIEW article
Front. Cardiovasc. Med.
Sec. Cardioneurology
Volume 12 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fcvm.2025.1630668
Heart rate variability: a multidimensional perspective from physiological marker to brain-heart axis disorders prediction
Provisionally accepted
- 1Baoding First Central Hospital, Baoding, China
- 2Baoding First Central Hospital, Shijiazhuang, China
- 3Department of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery, School and Hospital of Stomatology, Hebei Medical University & Hebei Key Laboratory of Stomatology & Hebei Clinical Research Center for Oral Diseases, Shijiazhuang, China
Select one of your emails
You have multiple emails registered with Frontiers:
Notify me on publication
Please enter your email address:
If you already have an account, please login
You don't have a Frontiers account ? You can register here
Heart rate variability (HRV), a non-invasive measure of autonomic nervous system (ANS) activity and homeodynamics, has received much attention in recent years in the study of cardiovascular disease, mental health, and aging. Changes in HRV not only reflect an individual's ability to adapt to changes in the internal and external environment but also correlate with a wide range of pathological states, making it a powerful tool for predicting disease risk and assessing the efficacy of treatment. The aim of this review is to comprehensively analyze the role of HRV in different physiological and pathological contexts and explore its value as a potential biomarker. Initially, we review the basic concepts, measurements, and influencing factors of HRV, followed by an in-depth discussion of the relationship between HRV and cardiovascular disease, epilepsy, depression, aging, and inflammation. Special emphasis is placed on the role of HRV in assessing the health impact of obesity, nutrition, and lifestyle. Additionally, we explore the use of HRV in clinical practice, including its potential in predicting disease, guiding treatment, and evaluating the effects of interventions. Ultimately, we suggest future research directions, including the promise of HRV in individualized medicine and health monitoring. While HRV holds promise as a non-invasive, trans-diagnostic biomarker, current evidence remains preliminary and largely associative. Its clinical utility for personalized medicine or routine risk prediction requires standardized acquisition protocols, external validation, and causal inference studies before implementation into decision-making algorithms. By synthesizing multiple studies through the lens of brain - heart axis (BHA) integrity, we propose that HRV metrics serve as a quantifiable, trans-diagnostic proxy for mapping the measurement, mechanistic, and translational axes of brain - heart dysfunction.
Keywords: Heart rate variability, Autonomic Nervous System, Sympathetic branch, Parasympathetic branch, Mixed branch, cardiovascular disease, Mental Health, Obesity
Received: 18 May 2025; Accepted: 30 Sep 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Liu, Cui and Chen. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Meihong Chen, 16630092649@163.com
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.