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It is commonly understood that in both healthy animals and humans, arterial blood oxygen levels stay constant as we breathe. However, until now, the technology available has not been fast enough, or small enough, to be able to measure and demonstrate this.
In a new paper published in Scientific Reports, researchers from the University of Oxford and King’s College London, developed and tested a new sensor that by effectively measuring arterial oxygen levels, has disproved the misconception that they stay constant. Instead, the sensor picked-up that arterial oxygen rates actually fluctuate as we breathe.