Sighing Dynamics as a Candidate Digital Biomarker for Anxiety in Daily Life Using Wearable Respiratory Monitoring: Intensive Longitudinal Study.
Higher trait anxiety linked to lower sighing frequency in daily life, not higher
Sighing Dynamics as a Candidate Digital Biomarker for Anxiety in Daily Life Using Wearable Respiratory Monitoring: Intensive Longitudinal Study.
Sighing has been proposed as a primary respiratory reset mechanism that is often linked to emotional regulation.
This study aimed to evaluate daily-life sighing dynamics as a candidate digital biomarker of anxiety by disentangling state and trait anxiety-sigh associations and comparing these dynamics between individuals with anxiety disorders and healthy controls (healthy controls).
Wore the Hexoskin respiratory inductance plethysmography smart shirt during each 36-hour block and completed 6 randomly timed ecological momentary assessment prompts per day during the daytime hours (9 AM to 9 PM).
trait anxiety linked to fewer sighs, not more
The analysis included 1279 synchronized psychophysiological windows from 33 participants.
Five participants were excluded due to insufficient valid synchronized windows.
The within-person anxiety-by-group interaction was significant (OR 1.14, 95% CI 1.03-1.26; P=.01), indicating that sighing tended to increase with higher momentary anxiety in healthy controls but was attenuated in participants with anxiety disorders.
Daily-life sighing dynamics showed a state-trait dissociation, with reduced state-dependent coupling in anxiety disorders versus healthy controls, supporting sighing as a candidate digital biomarker of anxiety.
The synchronized EMA-RIP protocol was feasible and yielded high-integrity real-world data.