Project Title: Reproducibility of physiological parameters and AMS in normobaric hypoxia
January to December 2018
Institute of Sports Science, University of Innsbruck
Staff: Daniel Jochum
(Master’s degree in Sports Science, University of Innsbruck, Institute of Sports Science)
Globally, high-altitude regions are visited by countless individuals, including mountaineers, trekkers, pilgrims, workers, business people, and military personnel. Acute high-altitude exposures carry the risk of high-altitude illnesses, of which Acute Mountain Sickness (AMS) is the most common form. AMS symptoms include headache, loss of appetite to vomiting, fatigue, dizziness, and sleep disturbances, which, depending on their severity, can severely limit affected individuals’ motor and cognitive performance. The incidence of AMS varies between 9% and over 63% depending on altitude and other factors, thus AMS represents a relevant problem and risk for the aforementioned groups of people.
For the implementation of preventive strategies (e.g., medicinal prophylaxis), it would be significant if individual risk could be predicted with sufficient accuracy. In practice, experience from previous high-altitude exposures or results from physiological test procedures are primarily used for this purpose. However, both the reproducibility of AMS symptoms and the reliability and predictive accuracy of these physiological test procedures are controversially discussed. Good reproducibility of results is a prerequisite for recommendations based on them, but generally represents a significant weakness in high-altitude medical research.
The aim of this study is therefore to examine the reproducibility of a) physiological measurement parameters for predicting AMS risk and b) AMS symptoms during passive exposures at simulated altitude.