Hypertension may increase neural respiratory drive at rest and at maximal voluntary ventilation

<bold>Background:</bold> Parasternal intercostal muscle activity can assess the imbalance between the load and capacity of respiratory muscles and presents a similar pattern to diaphragmatic action. A non-invasive recording of respiratory electromyographic signal is defined as Neural respiratory drive (NRD). <bold>Aim:</bold> We aimed to analyze the neural respiratory drive in seventeen individuals with hypertension during quite breathing and maximal voluntary ventilation (MVV) (103.9 ± 5.89 vs. 122.6 ± 5 l/min) in comparison with seventeen healthy subjects (46.5 ± 2.5 vs. 46.4 ± 2.4 years), respectively. <bold>Methods:</bold> The study protocol was composed of quite breathing during five minutes, maximum inspiratory pressure followed by maximal ventilatory ventilation (MVV) was recorded once for 15 seconds. Differences between groups were analyzed using the unpaired t-test or Mann-Whitney test and ANOVA Two-away was adopted to determine the difference between groups and QB (5 min) and MVV (15 sec). Bonferroni’s or Dunn’s post hoc test was applied to identify the differences. A significance level of 5% (p<0,05) was adopted for all statistical analyses. <bold>Results:</bold> The group of individuals with hypertension presented higher values when compared to the healthy group for neural respiratory drive (EMGpara% 17.9±1.3 vs. 13.1±0.8, p=0.0006) and neural respiratory drive index (NRDi (AU) 320±25 vs. 205.7±15,p=0.0004) during quiet breathing and maximal ventilatory ventilation (EMGpara% 29.3±2.7 vs. 18.3±0.8, p=0.000, NRDi (AU) 3140±259.4 vs. 1886±73.1,p<0.0001), respectively. In conclusion, individuals with hypertension presented higher NRD during quiet breathing and maximal ventilatory ventilation when compared to healthy individuals.