In this Oct. 27, 2011 file photo, the last light of the day sets on Mount Everest as it rises behind Mount Nuptse as seen from Tengboche, in the Himalaya’s Khumbu region, Nepal. A team of American scientists and researchers is setting up a laboratory at Mount Everest to study the effects of high altitude on humans. Team leader Dr. Bruce Johnson and eight other team members flew to the airstrip at Lukla, near Everest, on Friday, April 20, 2012. AP Photo/Kevin Frayer, File

KATMANDU,
Nepal (AP)—A team of American scientists and researchers flew to the
Mount Everest region on Friday to set up a laboratory at the base of the
world’s highest mountain to study the effects of high altitude on
humans.

The
team from the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota says it plans to monitor nine
climbers attempting to scale Everest to learn more about the physiology
of humans at high altitudes in order to help patients with heart
conditions and other ailments.

“We
are interested in some of the parallels between high altitude
physiology and heart failure physiology,” Dr. Bruce Johnson, who is
heading the team, told The Associated Press before leaving Nepal’s
capital, Katmandu, for the mountain. “What we are doing here will help
us with our work that we have been doing in the (Mayo Clinic)
laboratory.”

Johnson and the eight other team members flew to the airstrip at Lukla, near Everest, on Friday.

It
will take them about a week to trek to the Everest base camp, with
several porters and yaks helping to carry their 680 kg (1,500 pounds) of
medical equipment. They will set up their lab at the base camp, which
is located at 5,300 m (17,380 feet), and expect to be at the camp until
at least mid-May.

The
team says Everest’s extreme altitude puts climbers under the same
conditions experienced by patients suffering from heart disease.

The
team members plan to study the effects of high altitude on the heart,
the lungs, muscle loss and sleep during their stay at Everest, which
peaks at 8,850 m (29,035 feet).

Johnson
said that the team’s laboratory at the Mayo Clinic focuses on lung
congestion during heart failure and that lung congestion often kills
mountain climbers.

Hundreds
of climbers and their guides attempt to climb Everest every year, while
thousands more trek up to the base camp. Several of them suffer from
high altitude sickness and other complications because of the low level
of oxygen.

An
experienced Sherpa guide who had scaled Everest at least 10 times died
of high altitude sickness Wednesday at the mountain’s base camp,
becoming the first fatality in this year’s spring climbing season.

Hundreds
of climbers and their guides are currently camped at the base camp
preparing to scale Everest. Climbers generally try to scale the mountain
in May, when weather conditions usually improve just enough to enable
them to attempt to reach the peak.

Source: The Associated Press