United States Department of Transportation
i
Comparison of the Human Transcriptional Response to Three Hypoxic Environments
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2023-04-06
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[PDF-1.79 MB]
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Abstract:Hypoxia awareness training is a standard facet of military aviator training that is performed to familiarize aviators with the symptoms of hypoxia. The three most common training devices are the hypobaric altitude chamber (AC), the normobaric reduced oxygen breathing device (ROBD), and the normobaric reduced oxygen breathing environment (ROBE). The AC creates hypoxic conditions using reduced atmospheric pressure. The ROBD and ROBE create normobaric hypoxic conditions by supplying a controlled reduced-oxygen gas mixture to trainees who don an aviation-style breathing mask or occupy a sealed chamber, respectively. To determine if differences in the transcriptional response to each of these training devices exist, blood ribonucleic acid (RNA) samples from ten volunteer participants were analyzed by microarray. The resulting gene expression measures were screened for significant changes across time points within and across device runs. Few genes were significant in these comparisons; the most significant differences between timepoints were observed in small nucleolar RNAs and noncoding RNAs, as well as one microRNA and one transfer RNA. The transcriptional response to each training device differs slightly as determined by differences in transcription between time points. However, the role of these transcriptional changes is unclear, as little information exists as to their function or role in the hypoxic response. As all the examined methods induced hypoxic symptoms, and very little difference was observed in gene expression between methods, this limited study did not detect the presence of substantial differences between hypoxia awareness training devices. Future studies using more sensitive sequencing-based gene expression analysis techniques and larger sample sizes may improve the detection of transcriptional differences induced by each training device.
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