introduction: ghrelin is an endogenous peptide that has diverse functions in the body. one of the newly recognized roles of this peptide is its antiapoptotic effect. however, this function has not been investigated in normobaric hypoxia- induced apoptosis in body organs. this study will examine the effect of ghrelin treatment on bax-bcl-2 gene expression in the kidney of chronic hypoxic rats. m...

Intermittent hypoxic training (IHT) refers to the discontinuous use of normobaric or hypobaric hypoxia, in an attempt to reproduce some of the key features of altitude acclimatization, with the ultimate goal to improve sea-level athletic performance. In general, IHT can be divided into two different strategies: (1) providing hypoxia at rest with the primary goal being to stimulate altitude accl...

Reports based on experiences from masseurs and players, mostly without any scientific background, suggest that the combination of a classical regeneration method (i.e. massage) with exposure to hypoxia may enhance regeneration in soccer. The aim of this study was to evaluate whether this specific combination could affect blood parameters related to muscle damage and physical strain after a socc...

Extracellular adenosine has been widely implicated in adaptive responses to hypoxia. The generation of extracellular adenosine involves phosphohydrolysis of adenine nucleotide intermediates, and is regulated by the terminal enzymatic step catalyzed by ecto-5'-nucleotidase (CD73). Guided by previous work indicating that hypoxia-induced vascular leakage is, at least in part, controlled by adenosi...

TO THE EDITOR: The authors of the Viewpoint (2) propose that a cut-off point for initiation of hypoxia-induced muscle wasting is ~5,000 km·h. Although they employ a valuable new metric, incorporating elevation and total exposure time, we previously suggested that it might be better to quantify the hypoxic stimuli by using “saturation hours” (4). This is particularly important given that both (d...