Int. J. Medical Engineering and Informatics, Vol. 9, No. 4, 2017 299 Copyright © 2017 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd. Effect of age and postural related changes on cardiac autonomic function in the pre-menopausal and post-menopausal women Kirti Rawal* Dr. B R Ambedkar National Institute of Technology, Jalandhar-144011, Punjab, India Email: nitkr1234@gmail.com *Corresponding author B.S. Saini and Indu Saini Electronics and Communication Engineering Department, Dr. B R Ambedkar National Institute of Technology, Jalandhar-144011, Punjab, India Email: sainibss@gmail.com Email: indu.saini1@gmail.com Abstract: Heart rate variability (HRV) plays an important role in regulation of cardiac functioning during the menstrual and menopausal stages of women life. There are limited studies which considered the combined effect of ageing and postural changes on HRV of women. The objective of this study is: 1) to analyse and reveal the cardiac autonomic status of pre-menopausal and post-menopausal women; 2) to determine the effect of age and change in postures on autonomic modulations of heart rate of women. HRV dataset of 74 pre-menopausal women during follicular phase and 20 post-menopausal women in lying and standing postures are used for HRV analysis. The results proved that age and physical activities affect the HRV in post-menopausal and pre-menopausal women. It is shown using linear and nonlinear methods of HRV analysis that increase in age along with change in postures increases the sympathetic and decreases the parasympathetic activity in post-menopausal as compared to the pre-menopausal women. Keywords: ageing; autonomic nervous system; heart rate variability; HRV; menstrual cycle; post-menopausal women; pre-menopausal women. Reference to this paper should be made as follows: Rawal, K., Saini, B.S. and Saini, I. (2017) ‘Effect of age and postural related changes on cardiac autonomic function in the pre-menopausal and post-menopausal women’, Int. J. Medical Engineering and Informatics, Vol. 9, No. 4, pp.299–315. Biographical notes: Kirti Rawal received her BTech in Electronics and Communication Engineering from IITT College of Engineering, Pojewal, India in 2005 and then obtained her MTech in Electronics and Communication Engineering from BBSBEC Fatehgarh Sahib, Punjab. Presently, she is pursuing her PhD in the area of Biomedical Signal Processing from Dr B R Ambedkar National Institute of Technology Jalandhar, since 2011. B.S. Saini received his BTech in Electronics and Communication Engineering from Gulbarga University, India in 1994, MTech in Electronics and Communication Engineering from Kurukshetra University, India in 1996 and