High life of mountain dwellers helps them survive

PEOPLE who live in the mountains take twice as long to die of Covid-19 in intensive care as they are used to to low blood oxygen levels, a study suggests.

Researchers analysed 230 adult coronavirus patients in low altitude (sea level) and high altitude 9,350ft (2,850m) critical condition units in Ecuador between March 15 and July 15 2020.

Almost half of the patients had at least one underlying health condition, such as hypertension or diabetes. The majority (65 per cent) were men and the median age of all patients was 60.

Those in the high-altitude group survived for an average of 39 days, compared with an average of 21 days in the low altitude group – nearly half the time. Researchers suspect the reason for this may be related to their tolerance to hypoxemia.

Hypoxemia, when the level of oxygen in the blood is low, can be a symptom of Covid-19. Populations living at higher altitudes may possess greater tolerance to hypoxemia as moving higher above sea level can cause blood oxygen levels to decrease. This may explain why patients in intensive care 9,350ft above sea level survived for almost twice as long as those in the low altitude group.

“In this series of cases of critically ill patients with Covid-19 who were admitted to the ICU, there has been a substantial improvement in survival amongst people admitted to the high-altitude critical care unit,” the study states.

“Covid-19 patients admitted to the high-altitude ICU unit have improved severity-of-disease classification system scores at 72 hours and reported better respiratory and ventilatory profiles than the low-altitude group.”

The study was published in the journal medRxiv.