Skip to main content

ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Pediatr.

Sec. Pediatric Cardiology

Volume 13 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fped.2025.1543200

This article is part of the Research Topic Recent advances with orthostatic intolerance/tachycardia in children and adolescents: International perspectives View all articles

Family Relationships and Personality Traits of Postural Tachycardia Syndrome

Provisionally accepted
Meiko Matsui Meiko Matsui 1*Seiji Yoshida Seiji Yoshida 1Hidetaka Tanaka Hidetaka Tanaka 2Ginroku Yamawake Ginroku Yamawake 1Yusuke Kurooka Yusuke Kurooka 1Yoshitaka Ohta Yoshitaka Ohta 3Atsuko Kubo Atsuko Kubo 4Midori Mizutani Midori Mizutani 5Akira Ashida Akira Ashida 1
  • 1 Osaka Medical and Pharmaceutical University, Takatsuki, Japan
  • 2 OD Hypotension Clinic Tanaka, Osaka, Japan
  • 3 Saiseikai Suita Hospital, Suita, Japan
  • 4 Saiseikai Ibaraki Hospital, Ibaraki, Japan
  • 5 Hokusetsu General Hospital, Takatsuki, Japan

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Introduction: Orthostatic intolerance is the name of the disease in Europe and the United States; however, it is commonly known as orthostatic dysregulation (OD) in Japan. OD is a physical disorder caused by failure of the body's compensatory regulatory mechanism to adapt to changes in circulatory dynamics during orthostasis, although in many cases the influence of psychosocial factors has been noted. The mother-child relationship is a major psychosocial factor in children, and it has been reported that parent-child patterns associated with OD are often excessive parental interference and child over-adaptation. This study focused on the psychological and physical factors of OD and assessed the parent-child relationship patterns among children with postural tachycardia syndrome (POTS), a subtype of OD, and examined how they relate to the child's personality traits and autonomic neuron function. Methods: Thirty-six children diagnosed with POTS (mean age: 13.5 ± 0.9 years) were compared with the results of the following questionnaires on parent-child relationships, personality traits, and the autonomic neuron function test: Family Diagnostic Test (a diagnostic test of parent-child relationship) for mothers and children, and AN-EGOGRAM (the egograms that can be adapted to childhood and adolescence, when the ego is in the process of developing and growing), and a frequency analysis of heartrate and blood pressure variability for the children. Results: Assessment of the mother-child relationship patterns among children with POTS and found significant association between maternal "strict discipline" and children's negative feelings, between excessive parental intervention and children's susceptibility to stress, and between the degree of children's "feeling of rejection" and lower supine vasomotor sympathetic nerve activity. The findings also suggested that the personality traits of children with POTS included lower CP (critical parent) and FC (free child), and higher AC (adapted child), and that mothers of children with high AC were less dissatisfied with their spouses about childcare. Discussion: In the parentchild relationship in POTS, there is an association between maternal "strict discipline" and children's negative feelings, suggesting that a lower degree of strict discipline is considered to build a better parent-child relationship.

    Keywords: Orthostatic dysregulation, postural tachycardia syndrome, parent-child relationships, personality traits, autonomic neuron function

    Received: 13 Dec 2024; Accepted: 02 Apr 2025.

    Copyright: © 2025 Matsui, Yoshida, Tanaka, Yamawake, Kurooka, Ohta, Kubo, Mizutani and Ashida. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Meiko Matsui, Osaka Medical and Pharmaceutical University, Takatsuki, Japan

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.

    Research integrity at Frontiers

    Man ultramarathon runner in the mountains he trains at sunset

    95% of researchers rate our articles as excellent or good

    Learn more about the work of our research integrity team to safeguard the quality of each article we publish.


    Find out more