Stopping lung damage before it turns deadly
If you've ever struggled to breathe, you've had a moment of hypoxia—a lack of oxygen. Hypoxia can have long-term effects. In fact, doctors describe hypoxia as an "initial insult."
May 9, 2022
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If you've ever struggled to breathe, you've had a moment of hypoxia—a lack of oxygen. Hypoxia can have long-term effects. In fact, doctors describe hypoxia as an "initial insult."
May 9, 2022
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49
Obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) is a chronic sleep condition affecting more than one billion people worldwide. Evidence suggests OSA can alter the gut microbiome (GM) and may promote OSA-associated co-morbidities, including ...
Sep 23, 2020
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Sleep apnea in pregnancy may increase the risk for brain and behavioral changes associated with autism, especially in males, according to a study in rats by Amanda Vanderplow, Michael Cahill, and colleagues at the University ...
Feb 3, 2022
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In a surprising discovery, researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) identified a mechanism that protects the brain from the effects of hypoxia, a potentially lethal deprivation of oxygen. This serendipitous finding, ...
May 25, 2021
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The next stage of a Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) team's investigation into the therapeutic potential of the hypoxia response - the body's reaction to reduced levels of oxygen in the blood - to treat mitochondrial ...
May 8, 2017
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Hypoxia, or the inadequate oxygenation of a tissue, is a condition occurring frequently in all solid tumors such as melanoma skin cancer. Melanoma cells are not only able to survive oxygen deprivation, but also to use it ...
Jun 21, 2021
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Lack of oxygen during the period anticipating child birth, a condition that may affect children of pregnant women subjected to a high blood pressure disorder called pre-eclampsia, has been found to be a cause of schizophrenia. ...
Feb 21, 2020
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Brain cell dysfunction in low oxygen is, surprisingly, caused by the very same responder system that is intended to be protective, according to a new published study by a team of researchers at the Case Western Reserve University ...
Oct 21, 2020
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(Medical Xpress) -- Last month the United Nations backed a study that produced among other things the statistic that 15 million babies were born prematurely in 2010, a number that represents how far medical science has come ...
A team of University of Colorado School of Medicine researchers recently published a paper offering new insight into the role that oxygen deprivation, or hypoxia, plays in cancer development. CU Cancer Center member Joaquin ...
Mar 31, 2021
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Hypoxia, or hypoxiation, is a pathological condition in which the body as a whole (generalized hypoxia) or a region of the body (tissue hypoxia) is deprived of adequate oxygen supply. Variations in arterial oxygen concentrations can be part of the normal physiology, for example, during strenuous physical exercise. A mismatch between oxygen supply and its demand at the cellular level may result in a hypoxic condition. Hypoxia in which there is complete deprivation of oxygen supply is referred to as anoxia.
Hypoxia differs from hypoxemia in that, in the latter, the oxygen concentration within the arterial blood is abnormally low. It is possible to experience hypoxia and have a low oxygen content (e.g., due to anemia) but maintain high oxygen partial pressure (pO2). Incorrect use of these terms can easily lead to confusion, especially as hypoxemia is among the causes of hypoxia (in hypoxemic hypoxia).
Generalized hypoxia occurs in healthy people when they ascend to high altitude, where it causes altitude sickness leading to potentially fatal complications: high altitude pulmonary edema (HAPE) and high altitude cerebral edema (HACE). Hypoxia also occurs in healthy individuals when breathing mixtures of gases with a low oxygen content, e.g. while diving underwater especially when using closed-circuit rebreather systems that control the amount of oxygen in the supplied air. A mild and non-damaging intermittent hypoxia is used intentionally during altitude trainings to develop an athletic performance adaptation at both the systemic and cellular level.
Hypoxia is also a serious consequence of preterm birth in the neonate. The main cause for this is that the lungs of the human fetus are among the last organs to develop during pregnancy. To assist the lungs to distribute oxygenated blood throughout the body, infants at risk of hypoxia are often placed inside an incubator capable of providing continuous positive airway pressure (also known as a humidicrib).
In humans, hypoxia is detected by chemoreceptors in the carotid body. This response does not control ventilation rate at normal pO2, but below normal the activity of neurons innervating these receptors increases dramatically, so much so to override the signals from central chemoreceptors in the hypothalamus, increasing pO2 despite a falling pCO2
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