Altitude / Aerospace

There is limited understanding about the effect of hypoxia and hypoxemia on the human body during travel to high altitude. Further information is needed for understanding problems like altitude sickness, acute mountain sickness, hypertension, and even cerebral edema resulting from travel to high elevations.

Use of hypoxia chambers in cellular models and in vivo models are helpful to reproducibly mimic both acute exposures and also chronic exposures of reduced oxygen partial pressure at high altitude. Similar chambers are helpful for controlled programming of dynamic O₂ levels to mimic the rate of both ascent and descent. Other research groups use O₂ controlled chambers to evaluate therapeutic administration of oxygen for treating these problems.

Many teams have found hypoxia chambers and oxygen chambers from BioSpherix Ltd helpful for reproducibly performing altitude research. For cell-based research, the ProOx C21 & C-Chamber is an in vitro hypoxia chamber used for static control of O₂ and CO₂. Another configuration, the OxyCycler C42 & C-Chamber, is used for cell experiments requiring programmed, dynamic changes of O₂ and CO₂ during the experiment. For animal models, many groups have found the ProOx 360 & A-Chamber a useful option for static control of O₂ during either acute or chronic exposures. The OxyCycler A84 & A-Chamber is an in vivo hypoxia chamber option with programmed control of dynamic O₂ during the the experiment.