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Cooling Strategies for Older Adults in the Heat

NCT06349616 · Status: COMPLETED · Phase: NA · Type: INTERVENTIONAL · Enrollment: 12

Last updated 2025-07-24

No results posted yet for this study

Summary

The earth's climate is warming, and the number of heat waves has increased in recent years. At the same time, the number of adults over the age of 65 is growing. Humans sweat and increase blood flow to the skin to cool their body when they get hot. Older adults do not do this as well as young adults. This makes it harder to safely be in warm and/or humid conditions. It is important to learn about cooling strategies for older adults to safely be in warm and/or humid conditions.

There is compelling evidence that intermittent hand and forearm cold-water immersion effectively reduces the rise of core temperature during heat stress in older adults. However, it is still unknown if this is an effective cooling strategy for older adults. Furthermore, our laboratory has shown that folic acid supplementation improves blood flow responses in older adults. This may be beneficial to older adults during heat stress.

Conditions

  • Aging

Interventions

OTHER

Intermittent cold-water hand and forearm immersion

Participants will be seated at rest in a hot and humid environment. At 2 time points in the experiment, participants will place their hands and forearms in a bucket of cold tap water for 10 minutes.

OTHER

No intermittent cold-water hand and forearm immersion

Participants will be seated at rest in a hot and humid environment.

Sponsors & Collaborators

  • Penn State University

    lead OTHER

Principal Investigators

  • W. Larry Kenney, Ph.D. · The Pennsylvania State University

Study Design

Allocation
RANDOMIZED
Purpose
BASIC_SCIENCE
Masking
DOUBLE
Model
CROSSOVER

Eligibility

Min Age
65 Years
Max Age
100 Years
Sex
ALL
Healthy Volunteers
Yes

Timeline & Regulatory

Start
2024-05-01
Primary Completion
2025-07-21
Completion
2025-07-21

Countries

  • United States

Study Locations

More Related Trials

Read the full study record

This page highlights key information. For complete eligibility criteria, study locations, investigator contacts, and the full protocol, visit the original record on ClinicalTrials.gov.

View NCT06349616 on ClinicalTrials.gov