Systemic Oxygen Transport with Rest, Exercise, and Hypoxia: A Comparison of Humans, Rats, and Mice

The objective of this article is to compare and contrast the known characteristics of the systemic O2 transport of humans, rats, and mice at rest and during exercise in normoxia and hypoxia. This analysis should help understand when rodent O2 transport findings can-and cannot-be applied to human responses to similar conditions. The O2 -transport system was analyzed as composed of four linked conductances: ventilation, alveolo-capillary diffusion, circulatory convection, and tissue capillary-cell diffusion. While the mechanisms of O2 transport are similar in the three species, the quantitative differences are naturally large. There are abundant data on total O2 consumption and on ventilatory and pulmonary diffusive conductances under resting conditions in the three species; however, there is much less available information on pulmonary gas exchange, circulatory O2 convection, and tissue O2 diffusion in mice. The scarcity of data largely derives from the difficulty of obtaining blood samples in these small animals and highlights the need for additional research in this area. In spite of the large quantitative differences in absolute and mass-specific O2 flux, available evidence indicates that resting alveolar and arterial and venous blood PO2 values under normoxia are similar in the three species. Additionally, at least in rats, alveolar and arterial blood PO2 under hypoxia and exercise remain closer to the resting values than those observed in humans. This is achieved by a greater ventilatory response, coupled with a closer value of arterial to alveolar PO2 , suggesting a greater efficacy of gas exchange in the rats. © 2018 American Physiological Society. Compr Physiol 8:1537-1573, 2018.