Human physiological and metabolic responses to an attempted winter crossing of Antarctica: the effects of prolonged hypobaric hypoxia.

An insufficient supply of oxygen to the tissues (hypoxia), as is experienced upon high‐altitude exposure, elicits physiological acclimatization mechanisms alongside metabolic remodeling. Details of the integrative adaptive processes in response to chronic hypobaric hypoxic exposure remain to be sufficiently investigated. In this small applied field study, subjects (n = 5, male, age 28–54 years) undertook a 40 week Antarctica expedition in the winter months, which included 24 weeks residing above 2500 m. Measurements taken pre‐ and postexpedition revealed alterations to glucose and fatty acid resonances within the serum metabolic profile, a 7.8 (±3.6)% increase in respiratory exchange ratio measured during incremental exercise (area under curve, P > 0.01, mean ± SD) and a 2.1(±0.8) % decrease in fat tissue (P < 0.05) postexpedition. This was accompanied by an 11.6 (±1.9) % increase (P > 0.001) in VO2 max corrected to % lean mass postexpedition. In addition, spine bone mineral density and lung function measures were identified as novel parameters of interest. This study provides, an in‐depth characterization of the responses to chronic hypobaric hypoxic exposure in one of the most hostile environments on Earth.

• Publication year

  2018

• Venue

  Physiological Reports

• Publication date

  2018-03-01

• Fields of study

  Medicine, Environmental Science

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.14814/phy2.13613PMID 29521037PMCID 5843758
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar, PubMed

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

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