Grant: Project Grant

Over 85,000 people are living with a spinal cord injury (SCI) in Canada. People with SCI exhibit risks for heart disease earlier and more frequently than the general population and heart disease is the leading cause of illness and death for people with SCI. When someone sustains a SCI it causes a partial or full break in the connection between the brain and the spinal cord, thereby preventing information traveling from the brain down the spinal cord. In a cervical SCI, the break occurs in the neck and can affect the way the heart and blood vessels work. In turn, this decreases the capacity of the individual with SCI to exercise, which further increases their risk for heart disease. Within the field of SCI, an emerging therapy to strengthen connections in the spinal cord is to breathe air containing mildly decreased levels of oxygen for short periods of time and is referred to as acute intermittent hypoxia (AIH). AIH has been shown to cause the release of molecules that strengthen residual connections within the spinal cord resulting in improved capacity of the respiratory system and increased muscle strength in people with SCI. How AIH impacts the cardiovascular system has never been investigated in the field of SCI. As such, the major objectives of this research project are to investigate whether AIH, delivered either as a single session or repeated daily, improves cardiovascular function. To investigate this phenomenon, we will conduct experiments in rodent models of SCI as well as the clinical SCI population. We reason that if AIH can improve cardiovascular function then it may also help reduce the chronic burden of cardiovascular disease within the SCI population.