Two hundred million people in the world live above two thousand meters. Science, for decades, has looked elsewhere – towards the extreme peaks, the four thousand, the five thousand – leaving this enormous slice of humanity in a sort of blind spot in medical research. This is why Eurac Research, the private research center based in Bolzano, has seen fit to fill that gap, and to do so it needs someone willing to spend a month in a refuge.
Applications are open for the second season of the MAHE project — Moderate Altitude Healthy Exposure — which will take place in summer 2026 at the Nino Corsi Refuge, in Val Martello, in the heart of the Stelvio National Park. Altitude: 2,265 meters above sea level.
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The shelter as a laboratory
The idea behind the study is simple in its formulation, less banal in its verification: staying for a long time between 2,000 and 2,500 meters does something to the body. Previous studies conducted in Alto Adige suggest that living at these altitudes can help reduce the incidence of hypertension and metabolic disorders, certainly fascinating hypotheses, but yet to be confirmed with systematic data.
In the 2025 season, a group of volunteers spent four weeks at Rifugio Nino Corsi between August and September, the first experience of the aforementioned MAHE project. The Eurac Research Institute for Mountain Emergency Medicine, in collaboration with the University of Zurich, has set up real monitoring stations within the structure: portable cardiovascular ultrasound machines, continuous glucose sensors, CO-rebreathing devices – an instrument which, through the controlled inhalation of small doses of carbon monoxide, allows the mass of hemoglobin and the total volume of blood to be calculated. The parameters monitored ranged from cardiac and pulmonary functions to the activity of the sympathetic nervous system, from metabolism to sleep, from appetite to physical resistance performance.
In the meantime, the participants worked smart working, prepared university exams, played an improvised version of bowls with local stones.
Who can run — and who can’t
For 2026, the protocol starts again from Silandro (BZ), at 720 meters, where each volunteer will establish their physiological starting point through baseline measurements. Then the transfer to the shelter, for four consecutive weeks.
The study is aimed at men and women between 18 and 40 years old, in good health and with a normal body mass index. The exclusion criteria are precise: smokers, people with hypertension, diagnosed iron deficiencies, eating disorders or chronic diseases requiring drugs (with the exception of hormonal contraceptives). Also excluded are those who follow vegan diets or suffer from food allergies and intolerances – they would interfere with metabolic data – and those who train intensively more than twice a week.
A less obvious requirement: in the four weeks before starting, volunteers must not have stayed above 1,500 meters, because the altitude stimulus must start from zero.
Eurac covers room and board for the entire duration of the study and recognizes a flat-rate reimbursement of 400 euros gross. Anyone interested can contact Birna Vardardottir at mahe@eurac.edu.
The study is financed by the Joint Project program of the Swiss National Fund and the Autonomous Province of Bolzano, with the approval of the Ethics Committee of the Bolzano Hospital.
