The Project / Research title / Sleep disturbances, tissue oxygenation and acclimatisation at high altitude
Expedition & year / Medex Medical Expedition Manaslu 2015
Project funders / Medex Medical Expedition, PETZL Foundation, French Alpin Federation
Aim of project / To assess sleep disturbances at high altitude and their relationships with subject’s individual characteristics and tolerance to high altitude
Project staff / Principal Investigator / Samuel Verges
Collaborators / François Estève, Thomas Rupp, Pierre Bouzat, Guillaume Walther, Claire Maufrais
Institutes involved / Grenoble Alpes University, Savoie Mont-Blanc University, Avignon University, INSERM, Grenoble Alpes University Hospital
Data collection / What did your participants have to do? / Participants slept one night at sea level and one night at high altitude with several sensors recording their breathing, cardiac activity, body movement and blood oxygenation during the whole night. In addition, they filled questionnaires regarding the quality of their night and their acclimatisation to high altitude.
What data did you collect? / Occurrence of sleep apnea (times when breathing stops), oxygenation levels, heart rate and further analysis of cardiac rhythm, individual estimation of sleep quality and altitude acclimatisation
Photos / Attach 2 photos of research in action. /
Photo captions / Picture 1: Installation of the sensors before the night
Picture 2: After sleep recording
Who took the photos? / Samuel Verges
The results / What did you find out? / Periodic breathing (when breathing rate keeps changing) and sleep apnea (when breathing stops temporarily) occurred in most of the subjects at high altitude, but to different levels. Further work is being done to explain the differences and the potential link with acclimatisation and symptoms of acute mountain sickness.
What are the implications of your findings (e.g. for altitude medicine)? / These findings should help to determine whether sleep disturbances are associated or not with how well people acclimatise to altitude and should help to provide further information on the individual sleeping, breathing and physiological characteristics of participants with good or poor high altitude tolerance.
Sharing the results / At what conferences have the findings been presented? / These findings (after having completed all analysis) will be presented at the European Respiratory Society annual congress (2017).
What peer reviewed papers have been published? / No publication yet.
What books or lay publications have been published? / Nothing yet.
The future / What plans do you have to use the data in the future? / Data will be submitted for publication in international journals.
What do you think should be researched next? / If sleep is confirmed as being important for acclimatisation when staying at high altitude, one may consider some drug or other treatments aiming to improve sleep and oxygen levels. Studying sleep in low oxygen at sea level could also be confirmed as a test able to predict future adaptation to high altitude.
Any other comments / advice for others?