Effect of Anesthesia on Fetal-Maternal Heart Rate Variability and Coupling in Pregnant Mice and Fetuses

Abstract

To evaluate and assess the cardiovascular system during fetal development in the utero of pregnant mouse, it is essential to understand the effect of mandatory anesthesia treatment on sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system activities. The preliminary study presented in this paper explores the changes in fetal and maternal Heart Rate Variability (HRV) parameters as well as fetalmaternal Heart Rate (HR) coupling measures during anesthesia. ECG signals of 6 pregnant mice and 10 fetuses were recorded for 15 min. The obtained ECG signals were segmented into three periods, each for a duration of 5 min. Maternal and fetal HRV parameters in addition to fetalmaternal coupling patterns were computed for each of the three segments of the ECG signals. During the first 10 min, results show that mean and root mean square of successive differences (RMSSD) of maternal HR did not change, but significantly decreased after the first 10 min. A similar result was observed for the mean, RMSSD and standard deviation of NN intervals in fetal HR. On the other hand, no significant changes were observed for the coupling patterns between fetal-maternal heartbeats. These observations suggest that fetal nervous system activities were suppressed by anesthesia treatment applied to pregnant mice for more than 10 min.

Evidence and clinical relevance of maternal-fetal cardiac coupling: A scoping review

“…An additional six studies were found through other resources; three were found by searching the references of studies included through the database search, while three were found via searches of publications from researchers active in the field of MFCC. The latter three were either conference papers from technically oriented conference proceedings [ 24 ] or articles from journals that are not listed in PubMed, Embase, or Cochrane [ 8 , 12 ]. After removing the duplicate studies, 4,813 unique studies remained, of which 32 were found eligible for full-text screening.…”

Investigating the effect of cholinergic and adrenergic blocking agents on maternal-fetal heart rates and their interactions in mice fetuses

“…has attracted our interest. We have reported in our previous studies (Khandoker et al, 2016;Khandoker et al, 2017;Khandoker et al, 2018;Khandoker et al, 2020) that pregnant mice models pave the way for a better understanding of the embryonic nervous system development. A single mouse embryo cell requires three weeks to become a fully-grown newborn (Kaufman, 1992).…”

“…The intuitive question “How can research findings in mice models be extrapolated to human physiology?” has attracted our interest. We have reported in our previous studies ( Khandoker et al, 2016 , 2017 , 2018 , 2020 ) that pregnant mice models pave the way for a better understanding of the embryonic nervous system development. A single mouse embryo cell requires 3 weeks to become a fully-grown newborn ( Kaufman, 1992 ).…”