Pulmonary nitric oxide in mountain dwellers

Nitric oxide is synthesized in the lungs to help regulate blood flow, and its levels have been found to drop in species native to low altitudes, including humans, upon acute exposure to reduced oxygen concentration. But we show here that exhalation of nitric oxide by chronically hypoxic populations...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Nature (London) 2001-11, Vol.414 (6862), p.411-412
Main Authors: Beall, Cynthia M, Laskowski, Daniel, Strohl, Kingman P, Soria, Rudy, Villena, Mercedes, Vargas, Enrique, Alarcon, Ana Maria, Gonzales, Cristina, Erzurum, Serpil C
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adaptation, Physiological
Altitude
Blood flow
Bolivia
brief-communication
Enzymes
Exhalation
Hemoglobin
Human
Humanities and Social Sciences
Humans
Hypoxia
Hypoxia - metabolism
Indigenous species
Low altitude
Lung - metabolism
Lungs
Mountains
multidisciplinary
Nitric oxide
Nitric Oxide - metabolism
Oxygen - metabolism
Oxygen saturation
Populations
Science
Tibet
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Summary:Nitric oxide is synthesized in the lungs to help regulate blood flow, and its levels have been found to drop in species native to low altitudes, including humans, upon acute exposure to reduced oxygen concentration. But we show here that exhalation of nitric oxide by chronically hypoxic populations of Tibetans living at 4,200 m and of Bolivian Aymara at 3,900 m is unexpectedly increased compared with a low-altitude reference sample from the United States. This consistent response in two far-removed, high-altitude locales indicates that increasing the concentration of nitric oxide in the lungs may represent a means of offsetting hypoxia.
ISSN:0028-0836
1476-4687
DOI:10.1038/35106641