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Comment & Response
February 2016

Heart Rate Variability and Posttraumatic Stress Disorder

Author Affiliations
  • 1Center of Excellence for Stress and Mental Health, Veterans Administration, San Diego, California
  • 2Department of Psychiatry, University of California–San Diego
  • 3Veterans Administration San Diego Healthcare System, San Diego, California
JAMA Psychiatry. 2016;73(2):178-179. doi:10.1001/jamapsychiatry.2015.2663

To the Editor We appreciate the thoughtful editorial by Shah and Vaccarino1 in JAMA Psychiatry in response to our prospective investigation of the association of predeployment heart rate variability (HRV) with postdeployment posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in military service personnel.2 We agree that the findings are in need of replication by other groups, particularly with attention to limitations inherent in HRV indices including the low frequency to high frequency ratio, among others.3 Shah and Vaccarino1 mentioned several concerns, briefly addressed here.

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