Thesis (Ph.D.)--Aberdeen University, 2010. / Title from web page (viewed on Mar. 26, 2010). Includes bibliographical references.

Older individuals are known to adopt a less efficient breathing strategy than young adults during exercise. Whether different strategies are adopted by young and master athletes matched for height, weight and training volume during incremental and constant running is unclear.  In the first part of this thesis, it was demonstrated that during an incremental run to exhaustion and an 8 minute constant intensity run at 90% maximal aerobic speed, master athletes regulate their breathing less efficiently than young athletes.  Major differences in breathing regulation were also observed within the young athletic group (between individuals and between tests) indicating a heterogeneity of response in this population that was, at least partly, linked to baseline expiratory flow rates. An original approach (<i>i.e. </i>using urinary levels of the lung specific protein CC16 to detect a possible disruption of the airway epithelium during exercise in young athletes) was used in the second part of the thesis.  In the first instance, an increase in urinary CC16 after a short period of hyperpnoea of dry air in all the individuals studied (<i>i.e.</i> trained and untrained subjects with and without asthma) was demonstrated.  By comparing the response of summer and winter athletes it was then established that the rise of CC16 post-challenge was independent from the usual environment in which athletes train.  Finally, it was shown that the rise of urinary CC16 is more severe after a short exercise bout performed in cold dry than hot humid air.  Together these results confirm that exercise-induced hyperventilation can have a noxious effect on the fragile airway epithelium of healthy young athletes.