Selective reductions of cardiac autonomic responses to light bicycle exercise with aging in healthy humans.

We examined on 56 (age 38+/-2 [range: 16-60] years) healthy subjects the effects of aging on cardiovascular autonomic responses to progressive supine bicycle exercise of light intensity. Autoregressive spectral analysis of RR interval and systolic arterial pressure (SAP) variabilities provided measures of the exercise-induced changes in baroreflex gain (by index alpha) and in sympathetic and vagal modulation of the SA node (by the normalized low [LF] and high frequency [HF] component of RR interval variability, respectively), as well as of changes in sympathetic vasomotor control (LF(SAP)). For each hemodynamic and autonomic variable, the gain of the response was expressed both as individual step increments, and as the slope of the linear regression of the sequential data points from rest and during the three steps of exercise.