View clinical trials related to Normoxia.
Filter by:This study aims to determine the effect of acute mild intermittent hypoxia on ankle plantarflexor muscle output during balance regulation and walking in younger and older adults. Fifteen younger adults and 15 older adults will be recruited to participate in the cross-over design study that requires 2 visits (at least 1-week apart). Participants will be pseudo-randomly assigned to receive either intermittent hypoxia or sham during the first visit, and then switch over to receive sham or intermittent hypoxia during the 2nd visit. Muscle activation patterns and kinetic and kinematics during standing and walking will be recorded before and after the intermittent hypoxia/sham. It is hypothesized that compared to the sham condition, both younger and older participants will show greater increases in ankle plantarflexor muscle activation during gait and balance assessments following intermittent hypoxia.
Oxygen is a widely available gas that is cheap, easy to get and extensively used in medicine. From animal studies it has become apparent that increasing or lowering the degree of oxygen in the blood, the inflammatory response can be altered. We will investigate of this is also true in humans by increasing, lowering or keeping oxygen levels normal while giving healthy subjects a short inflammatory stimulus.
The inner retina is crucially dependent on an adequate retinal blood supply. When the retina becomes ischemic and hypoxic this results in severe vision loss due to retinal neovascularization. Measurement of retinal blood flow and retinal oxygenation is, however, still a difficult task. Information on retinal oxygenation is almost unavailable from human studies. In the present protocol the investigators propose a procedure allowing for the measurement of retinal blood flow, retinal oxygenation and retinal oxygen extraction by combining a number of innovative techniques. Specifically, retinal vessel diameters will be measured with a Retinal Vessel Analyzer, retinal blood velocities with bi-directional laser Doppler velocimetry and retinal oxygenation with spectroscopic evaluation of retinal fundus images. This will allow for the calculation of retinal oxygen extraction, a fundamental parameter of retinal function. Up to now, no data for retinal oxygen extraction are available in the literature.