High altitude research

There are a wide range of potential applications for research at high altitude, including medical, physiological, and cosmic physics research.

High altitude medical research

The most obvious and direct application of high altitude research is to understand altitude illnesses such as acute mountain sickness, and the rare but rapidly fatal conditions, high altitude pulmonary oedema (HAPE) and high altitude cerebral oedema (HACE) [cite web|url=http://www.altitude-sickness.org/|title=altitude-sickness.org|accessdate=2007-08-15] . Research at high altitude is also an important way to learn about sea level conditions that are caused or complicated by hypoxia such as chronic lung disease and sepsis. Patients with these conditions are very complex and usually suffer from several other diseases at the same time, so it is virtually impossible to work out which of their problems is caused by lack of oxygen. Altitude research gets round this by studying the effects of oxygen deprivation on otherwise healthy people.

Travelling to high altitude is often used as a way of studying the way the body responds to a shortage of oxygen. It is difficult and prohibitively expensive to conduct some of this research at sea level

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