The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of altitude training at 1800m on respiratory chemosensitivity.Five student endurance runners (mean ages = 17.0 ± 1.6 years) participated in this study. As an index of respiratory chemosensitivity, hypoxic ventilatory response (: HVR) and hypercapnic ventilatory response (: HCVR) were tested before and after altitude training for four days including three nights in a row. HVR increased from pre-training to post-training (0.477 ± 0.141 l/min/% pre-training, 0.681 ± 0.227 l/min/% post-training), but could not show a significant change. HCVR showed a same level between pre-training and post-training (1.211 ± 0.599 l/min/torr pre-training, 1.259 ± 0.490 l/min/torr post-training).These results suggested that altitude training at 1800m for four days and three nights may raise hypoxic chemosensitivity, but not affect hypercapnic chemosensitivity.
