What exactly is hypoxia?
It sounds contagious Hypoxia simply means a lack of oxygen. Most of us involved in the project work in intensive-care units looking after critically ill patients. Almost all of these patients will, at some point, suffer from a lack of oxygen in their blood, which if left untreated can result in death. So how could your mountain research help? We were looking for physiological mechanisms that would allow us to predict who is good and who is bad at altitude. We took genetic material from each of the subjects to see what might be responsible for the differences. It’s currently very difficult for doctors to predict or explain to families which hypoxic patients will do well and who will do badly. We’re hoping our research might provide a good model for new treatment strategies. What’s your role within the team? I am one of the two deputy research leaders, bringing together all the research components. We had 222 subjects and 60 investigators all working at the same time in Nepal, and we bro
