Human ventilatory responsiveness to hypoxia is unrelated to maximal aerobic capacity

Ventilatory responsiveness to hypoxia (HVR) has been reported to be different between highly trained endurance athletes and healthy sedentary controls. However, a linkage between aerobic capacity and HVR has not been a universal finding. The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between HVR and maximal oxygen consumption (V̇o2 max) in healthy men with a wide range of aerobic capacities. Subjects performed a HVR test followed by an incremental cycle test to exhaustion. Participants were classified according to their maximal aerobic capacity. Those with a V̇o2 max of ≥60 ml·kg−1·min−1 were considered highly trained ( n = 13); those with a V̇o2 max of 50–60 ml·kg−1·min−1 were considered moderately-trained ( n = 18); and those with a V̇o2 max of <50 ml·kg−1·min−1 were considered untrained ( n = 24). No statistical differences were detected between the three groups for HVR ( P > 0.05), and the HVR values were variable within each group (range: untrained = 0.28–1.61, moderately trained = 0.23–2.39, and highly trained = 0.08–1.73 l·min·%arterial O2 saturation−1). The relationship between HVR and V̇o2 max was not statistically significant ( r = −0.1723; P > 0.05). HVR was also unrelated to maximal minute ventilation and ventilatory equivalents for O2 and CO2. We found that a spectrum of hypoxic ventilatory control is present in well-trained endurance athletes and moderately and untrained men. We interpret these observations to mean that other factors are more important in determining hypoxic ventilatory control than physical conditioning per se.