Almost three long months of climbing, clinical research, highs and lows came to an end for the Xtreme Everest 2 team last Thursday.  The celebration party in Kathmandu, Nepal, was held six years to the day of the successful summit by the 2007 Caudwell Xtreme Everest expedition team, which involved many of the group who were part of this crew.

The Xtreme Everest 2 team explored the well-known ability of Sherpas to tolerate hypoxia – reduced oxygen – at high altitude.  64 Sherpas and more than 100 lowlanders, mainly from the UK, were studied over two months.  The scientific agenda focused on microcirculatory and mitochondrial function, nitrogen oxide biology and epigenetics.

A slideshow of …

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Two months into a research expedition to Mount Everest, Extreme Physiology & Medicine Editor-in-Chief Mike Grocott, reports from the trip.  Researchers on the Xtreme Everest 2 expedition are comparing Sherpa and “lowlander” physiology.

The Sherpas are a group known to perform extraordinarily well at altitude.  The team record the physiological responses of healthy individuals in this extreme environment – low oxygen levels at high altitude – and apply this research to patients in intensive care.  This is very much in line with the Extreme Physiology & Medicine’s objectives, outlined in its launch editorial, to explore boundary physiology and translate research findings into a clinical setting.

Mike provided this update:

“All our recruited subjects have now been …

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