A study of nine British children who trekked towards Everest Base Camp could help to save premature babies from blindness and lung damage and provide life-saving information for doctors in intensive care units.

Researchers monitored the effects of high altitude on the group of children aged six to thirteen.

During the trek the children were breathing far less oxygen than they would at sea level, which was as debilitating as a critical illness and similar to the conditions experienced by premature babies. The results of the Smiths Medical Young Everest Study suggest that the children coped better than would be expected with the low levels of oxygen saturation in the blood.

Faced with a premature baby — or a child with chronic breathing difficulties — doctors would normally intervene and administer oxygen. But giving too much oxygen to children can cause them lung damage and in premature babies can lead to blindness.

The nine children who ascended mountain pathways provided data that could be the basis for future tests to establish whether doctors can lower the doses of oxygen administered. It may also pave the way for children with chronic lung diseases to be monitored at home rather than in hospital.

The study suggested that the human body copes with lower oxygen levels by reverting to techniques used in the womb. Monty Mythen, Smiths Medical Professor of Anaesthesia and Critical Care at University College London, who volunteered his own four children for the study, said: “A child in the womb uses less oxygen, about the amount that someone would have at 8,500 m [27,900ft].”

Next week doctors of heart and lung diseases and hypoxia — critically low blood oxygen saturation — will meet with intensive care doctors and doctors who specialise in foetal growth, to discuss whether there is a link between people experiencing high altitudes, foetuses in the womb and diving mammals.

Professor Mythen said: “Younger children may actually be better than people who have gone through puberty. Being closer to the womb, they have more of their adaptive processes still switched on.”

Though the children all coped well with lower levels of oxygen in their blood, some coped far better than others, suggesting that they had a genetic predisposition to adapt to low oxygen levels. The information may help to develop tailored treatments for children in intensive care.

Doctors currently have no way of telling how a patient will react to low levels of oxygen in their bloodstream. Roughly a quarter of people adapt very quickly, 50 per cent adapt more slowly, while a remaining quarter cope very poorly and may die unless they receive adequate support.

Two of the children on the study adapted to high altitude with the proficiency of high mountain climbers, while one of the nine struggled.

Janet Stocks, Professor of Respiratory Physiology at University College London, who led the study, said: “The children all kept diaries recording how they were feeling, and this really didn’t reflect how their bodies were coping. I think it’s fairly clear that there is a genetic determinant.”

Professor Mythen is now planning a more ambitious study, taking 100 British children to the Himalayas in 2011.

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