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Direct calorimetry: a brief historical review of its use in the study of human metabolism and thermoregulation

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Abstract

Direct calorimetry is the gold standard means of measuring human metabolic rate and its use has been fundamental for understanding metabolism in health and disease. While metabolic rate is now more commonly estimated indirectly from measures of the oxygen consumed during respiration, direct calorimetry provides the user with the unique capacity to quantify the heat produced from aerobic and anaerobic metabolism by measuring heat exchange between the body and the environment. This review provides a brief historical overview of the fundamental concepts which underlie direct calorimetry, of pioneer scientists which developed these concepts into functional pieces of equipment and the subsequent use of direct calorimetry to advance our understanding of energy balance, nutrition, and the pathogenesis of metabolic diseases. Attention is directed to seminal studies that successfully employed direct calorimetry to verify that the law of energy conservation also applies to human beings and to establish the validity of indirect calorimetry. Finally, we discuss the more recent use of direct calorimetry for the measurement of whole-body heat exchange and body heat storage in the study of human thermoregulation.

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Acknowledgements

Support for this work is provided in part by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (funds held by Dr. Glen P. Kenny). G. P. Kenny is supported by a University of Ottawa Research Chair Award. This work is presented in memory of Dr. Paul Webb (MD). Dr. Webb was born in Willoughby, Ohio, on Dec. 2, 1923. He received his M.D. from the University of Virginia in 1943 and an M.S. in physiology from the University of Washington in 1949. He served in the U.S. Army from 1948 to 1950, taught physiology at University of Oklahoma medical school from 1952 to 1954, and worked at the Air Force Biomedical Laboratory at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base from 1954 to 1958. In 1959, he founded Webb Associates, a research company, in Yellow Springs. Webb Associates performed several major research studies for the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the Office of Naval Research and the Air Force. Dr. Webb closed his Yellow Springs laboratory in 1982 and moved to France. There, he performed experiments at Hospital Bichat in Paris. From 1984 to 1988, he worked in various technical companies and universities in Norway, The Netherlands and Sweden. During his career, Dr. Webb received a great many awards for his work; two of these awards are the Fritz J. Russ Award in bioengineering and the Jeffries Aerospace Medicine and Life Sciences Research Award from the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, notification of which he received a short time before his death on May 18, at the age of 90 (Online edition of the Yellow Springs News, May 29, 2014).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Human and Environmental Physiology Research Unit, Faculty of Health Sciences, School of Human Kinetics, University of Ottawa, 125 University Private, Room 367, Montpetit Hall, Ottawa, ON, K1N 6N5, Canada

    Glen P. Kenny & Sean R. Notley

  2. Cardiovascular Prevention and Rehabilitation Centre, Montreal Heart Institute Research Centre, Montreal, Canada

    Daniel Gagnon

  3. Département de Pharmacologie Et Physiologie, Faculté de Médecine, Université de Montréal, Montreal, Canada

    Daniel Gagnon

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  1. Glen P. Kenny
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Correspondence to Glen P. Kenny.

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Kenny, G.P., Notley, S.R. & Gagnon, D. Direct calorimetry: a brief historical review of its use in the study of human metabolism and thermoregulation. Eur J Appl Physiol 117, 1765–1785 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00421-017-3670-5

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