Enhanced erythropoietin production during hypobaric hypoxia in mice under treatments to keep the erythrocyte mass from rising: implications for the adaptive role of polycythemia.

Stress erythropoiesis is usually considered as a compensatory effort to counteract tissue hypoxia. Its homeostatic importance in anemic hypoxia has not been questioned, but researchers, clinicians, and mountain climbers have had second thoughts on polycythemia as to its appropriateness for hypoxic or altitude hypoxia (HA). Therefore, polycythemia, one of the responses to HA seen in nongenetically adapted mammals, could or could not be considered beneficial. The present study was thus performed to obtain further information on the importance of HA polycythemia on acclimation of mice to HA. To this end, the development of polycythemia was prevented by experimental manipulations (administration of 20 mg/kg/d of the hemolytic drug phenylhydrazine or removal of 0.225 mL/d of blood), and the degree of tissue hypoxia was evaluated from plasma erythropoietin (pEPO) concentration, as determined by immunoassay, in adult female mice exposed to air maintained at 506 mbar (380 mmHg) in a simulated HA (SHA) chamber during at least 23.5 h/d for 9 d. Plasma EPO concentration in those treated hypoxic mice whose hematocrit values remained almost unchanged was between 5.55 and 7.89 times higher (depending on the experimental designs) than in control hypoxic mice allowed to develop HA polycythemia. These results, plus the finding of an inverse relationship between the hematocrit value and pEPO concentration in both the polycythemic and normocythemic SHA-exposed mice indicate that HA polycythemia is highly effective in ameliorating tissue hypoxia under SHA conditions, thus giving support to the concept of the important role of the increased hemoglobin mass in nongenetically adapted animals, whereas a left-shifted oxyhemoglobin dissociation curve confers a good degree of adaptation to HA in genetically adapted animals.