Ventilatory long-term facilitation following acute intermittent hypoxia in unanesthetized rats: influence of short hypoxic episodes and changes in metabolic rate

Plasticity is a hallmark feature of the neural system controlling breathing. Acute intermittent hypoxia (AIH) elicits plasticity in multiple respiratory motor pools ( e.g., phrenic, intercostal, XII, etc.) and has emerged as a promising therapeutic approach to restore lost respiratory (and non-respiratory) function in people with spinal cord injury and other clinical disorders that compromise movement. In anesthetized rats during the rest phase, AIH-induced phrenic long-term facilitation is enhanced when the AIH consists of short (1-min) versus longer (5-min) moderate hypoxic episodes (PaO 2 ~40-50 mmHg), even with the same cumulative duration of hypoxia (15-min). However, since respiratory plasticity is influenced by a variety of behavioral and physiological factors such as sensory feedback, lung/chest wall mechanics and arousal state, the effectiveness of specific AIH protocols may differ when implemented in unanesthetized rats. Since it is unknown how hypoxic episode duration impacts ventilatory long-term facilitation (vLTF) in unanesthetized rats during the rest phase, we initially tested the hypothesis that short (1-min) hypoxic episodes (FIO 2 = 0.09) elicit vLTF in young male Sprague-Dawley rats via whole-body plethysmography; metabolic CO 2 production was also assessed. Following 15, 1-min hypoxic episodes, significant vLTF was observed, and this effect was more pronounced when ventilation was normalized to metabolic rate ( i.e. V E /VCO 2 ; p < 0.05). AIH-induced vLTF was accompanied by hypometabolism and a post-hypoxic temperature decrease (p < 0.01), consistent with previous work. Additional studies will be performed to compare these results with “traditional” AIH protocols ( i.e., 5-min hypoxic episodes), and across the rats’ rest versus active phase. In perspective, these results set the stage for future investigations concerning the optimization of AIH protocols in unanesthetized rodent models, including rodent models of injury or disease. NIH HL148030 & 147554 (Mitchell). This is the full abstract presented at the American Physiology Summit 2024 meeting and is only available in HTML format. There are no additional versions or additional content available for this abstract. Physiology was not involved in the peer review process.