A Lab on Everest

Mayo Clinic researchers set up shop in the Himalayas to study the physiology of climbers attempting to scale the world's highest peak.

Written byBob Grant

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Mount Everest's North FaceWIKIMEDIA COMMONS, LUCA GALUZZI

On Friday (April 20), a team of researchers from the Rochester, Minnesota-based Mayo Clinic arrived in the Mount Everest region of Nepal to begin setting up a high-altitude lab to study the effects of high altitude on human physiology. The study aims to inform the treatment of patients with heart conditions, who sometimes suffer symptoms similar to climbers enduring the low-oxygen environments of the mountaintops. "We are interested in some of the parallels between high altitude physiology and heart failure physiology," physiologist Bruce Johnson, who is heading the team, told The Associated Press. "What we are doing here will help us with our work that we have been doing in the [Mayo Clinic] laboratory."

Johnson and his team left Nepal's capital, Kathmandu, and are making ...

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Meet the Author

Bob Grant
From 2017 to 2022, Bob Grant was Editor in Chief of The Scientist, where he started in 2007 as a Staff Writer. Before joining the team, he worked as a reporter at Audubon and earned a master’s degree in science journalism from New York University. In his previous life, he pursued a career in science, getting a bachelor’s degree in wildlife biology from Montana State University and a master’s degree in marine biology from the College of Charleston in South Carolina. Bob edited Reading Frames and other sections of the magazine.
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