Morphofunctional status of first-year students of adjacent generations at the turn of the millennium

Abstract

The aim of this work was to carry out a comparative analysis of a series of anthropometric and physiometric parameters of students who studied in the first year of three faculties of Perm State Humanitarian Pedagogical University (PSHPU) in the academic years 2004/2005 and 2022/2023, that is, students belonging to two adjacent generations. The height and body weight, the blood pressure, the type of regulatory processes, as well as indices calculated on the basis of the listed parameters were compared: body mass index, or Quetelet's index (BMI), Functional Changes Score (FCS), Centralization Index (CI), Regulatory Effort Index (REI). The last two indices are derivatives of the parameters of heart rate variability (HRV), which make it possible to assess the contribution of autonomous and central regulatory circuits to the body processes and to predict the adaptive resources of the body. In both samples, there were the expected differences between the male and female participants in terms of weight and height parameters, e.g. the men were taller and heavier than the women, except for those whose BMI exceeded 25 kg/m2, i.e. overweight students. However, the students surveyed in 2022 did not demonstrate any differences in the values of the height and weight from those who studied in the same faculties in 2004. The assessment of the functional parameters did not show any significant differences between the generations of the late XX, early XXI century in the heart rate (HR), in the duration of the most frequent RR interval (Mo) and in the contribution of the autonomic and central regulatory circuits to the regulatory processes. What is alarming is the higher blood pressure, especially pulse pressure, which is a kind of marker of the vascular wall abnormalities in the large arteries. It was observed in students, especially young men, of a later generation, i.e. born in 2002-2004. HRV data indicate greater resistance of the women’s body to stressing factors. This can be concluded based on the influence of central and autonomous regulation circuits on the characteristics of heart rate: in the women, the autonomous regulatory processes were more intense than in men. Moreover, this fact was reported both in the sample of 2022 and among students examined in 2004.