Age, gender, and individually-typological features of reaction to sharp hypoxic influence

Abstract

Age- and gender-related and individual characteristics of hypoxic resistance in healthy subjects with different temperaments (choleric and sanguine persons) were studied, and different responses to acute normobaric hypoxia (inhalation of air with 10% O2) were found. The age-related changes in the dynamics of blood oxygen saturation after the acute hypoxia were manifested at the level of certain sections on the SpO2 curve (phases of delay, decline, and rise). It is established that, in children, the sensitivity to acute hypoxia was higher than in teenagers and that in teenagers is was higher than in adults. A higher lability of mental processes, the predominance of sympathetic activity in the autonomic regulation, and a greater personal anxiety are associated with the choleric temperament. The choleric persons are characterized by a slower restoration of blood oxygen saturation to the initial level after acute hypoxia than the sanguine persons, which is regarded as a lower hypoxic resistance of the former. We have developed a complex algorithm describing the dependence of the oxygen saturation dynamics in different phases of the hypoxic test, which can be used as a universal method of the estimation of hypoxic resistance in different groups of the population.