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Dr. Schrage has a BS in Biology from University of Utah, and PhD from University of Missouri-Columbia. He completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN before arriving in Madison in 2006. His teaching covers undergraduate and graduate classes in Kinesiology, mainly around environmental and exercise physiology. He serves on numerous departmental, School of Education, and National Scientific commitees. Dr. Schrage leads a laboratory focused on how blood flow is regulated to different organs, how control changes with obesity and prediabetes, and test whether biological sex impacts cardiovascular and blood flow control in health and disease. They test these ideas directly in human volunteers, using a range of non-invasive and invasive approaches including state-of-the-art MRI. The lab has been funded by National Institutes of Health, American Heart Association, and American Diabetes Association.
- Sex differences in gray matter, white matter, and regional brain perfusion in young, healthy adults
- An oral glucose tolerance test does not affect cerebral blood flow: role of NOS
- Recent insights into mechanisms of hypoxia-induced vasodilatation in the human brain
- Reduced basal macrovascular and microvascular cerebral blood flow in young adults with metabolic syndrome: potential mechanisms
- Preserved β-adrenergic-mediated vasodilation in skeletal muscle of young adults with obesity despite shifts in cyclooxygenase and nitric oxide synthase
- Nitric oxide synthase inhibition in healthy adults reduces regional and total cerebral macrovascular blood flow and microvascular perfusion
- Differential contribution of cyclooxygenase to basal cerebral blood flow and hypoxic cerebral vasodilation
- Reactive oxygen species and cyclooxygenase products explain the majority of hypoxic cerebral vasodilation in healthy humans
- Phosphodiesterase-5 inhibition preserves exercise-onset vasodilator kinetics when NOS activity is reduced
- Potentiation of the NO-cGMP pathway and blood flow responses during dynamic exercise in healthy humans
Research Questions
- What are the body’s signals responsible for regulating the normal blood flow response to exercise?
- How does your body increase blood flow when oxygen levels are reduced?
- Do men and women regulate blood flow similarly and to the same level?
- Does excess adiposity change blood flow regulation? By what mechanisms?
- What is the impact of prediabetes on vascular function, in muscle or brain circulations?
Our goal is to understand how blood flow is regulated in health and disease. We focus on how obesity or pre-diabetes impacts blood flow regulation, in both skeletal muscle and brain tissue. Proper control of blood flow has enormous influence on blood pressure and oxygen delivery-especially during exercise or other environmental stresses. In addition, limitations in blood flow are often linked to cardiovascular diseases like diabetes, as well as neurodegenerative diseases like dementia. Various state-of-art methods are used to conduct experiments directly in human volunteers.
In other words, how do our bodies regulate blood flow in skeletal muscles and brains, and how does this change with disease?
We are very interested in mechanisms responsible for controlling blood flow, including signals from nerves, contracting muscles, substances in the blood, and the vessels themselves. While much of our research focuses on the cardiovascular response to a single session (acute exercise or short-term hypoxia), we also think about these responses before and after long-term interventions.
Our core laboratory currently includes one study coordinator and three doctoral students, and one MS student. We receive medical support from several outstanding physicians, to help with drug infusions and invasive studies-which is how we explore blood flow control mechanisms. In addition, several undergraduate students participate in both credit and non-credit programs.
The Schrage lab also has collaborations across campus, including Medical Physics, Radiology, and Endocrinology.