Individual‐Specific QT Interval Correction for Drugs With Substantial Heart Rate Effect Using Holter ECGs Extracted Over a Wide Range of Heart Rates

Abstract Although fixed QT correction methods are typically used to adjust for the effect of heart rate on the QT interval in thorough QT/QTc studies, individual‐specific QT correction (QTcI = QT/RR I ) is advisable for drugs that increase the heart rate by >5 to 10 beats/minute (bpm). QTcI is traditionally derived using resting drug‐free electrocardiograms (ECGs) collected at prespecified times. However, the resting heart rate range in healthy individuals is narrow, and extrapolation of inferences from these data to higher heart rates could be inappropriate. Accordingly, the QTcI derived from triplicate ECGs extracted at prespecified times (the traditional [T] method, yielding QTcIT) was compared with QTcIs obtained using ECGs with a wider heart rate range (alternative Holter [H] method, yielding QTcIH) from 24‐hour Holter recordings from 40 healthy individuals selected from a central ECG laboratory database. For QTcIH, 10‐second ECGs were extracted at stable heart rates in the ranges of 51‐60, 61‐70, 71‐80, and 81‐90 bpm (9 ECGs in each bin = 36 ECGs). An independent set of 40 ECGs with heart rates from 51 to 90 bpm was extracted from each individual to validate the accuracy of QTcI by the 2 methods. For the validation set, the QTcIH was a better QT correction method (slope of QTc vs heart rate closer to zero) than QTcIT. The mean difference between QTcIT and QTcIH increased from 3.1 milliseconds at 65 bpm to 10.0 milliseconds at 90 bpm ( P < 0.01). The QTcIT exceeded QTcIH at heart rates > 60 bpm. Employment of the QTcIH may be more appropriate for studies involving drugs that increase heart rate.