Mij
Senior Member (Voting Rights)
In-depth studies include first health data collected from space tourists
NASA and other space agencies have studied the health of hundreds of astronauts over the past 6 decades, finding a wide range of impacts, including elevated long-term cancer risks from exposure to space radiation, muscle atrophy and bone loss from life in microgravity, and changes in vision. But private spaceflights are giving researchers the chance to study the risks in more detail, with the latest biomedical technologies. “A good 30% to 40% of [the SOMA assays] are new,” Mason says.
One message from the SOMA studies, Mason says, is that the same health effects that professional astronauts experience over their long expeditions turn up among space tourists who only spend a few days in orbit.
One study confirms NASA’s research on the Kelly twins, showing how space stressed the Inspiration4 crew’s immune cells, affecting the chromatin, or chromosome material, in a type of white blood cell called monocytes. Mason says the immune system is “on high alert, aggravated.” The researchers also sequenced RNA in astronauts’ blood, finding that the stress of spaceflight affected the transcription of immune system genes, possibly reducing the body’s ability to defend against viruses.
The studies suggest men and women face different risks in space and recover at different rates after returning to Earth, says Tejaswini Mishra, a geneticist at Stanford University who previously worked on NASA’s twins study.
Women’s vision appears to be less affected by microgravity, and their monocytes returned to normal more quickly than men’s. But women space travelers appear to be more vulnerable to some cardiovascular and cancer risks. There’s still not much data available for women astronauts, though, Mishra says, and those sex differences need further study.
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NASA and other space agencies have studied the health of hundreds of astronauts over the past 6 decades, finding a wide range of impacts, including elevated long-term cancer risks from exposure to space radiation, muscle atrophy and bone loss from life in microgravity, and changes in vision. But private spaceflights are giving researchers the chance to study the risks in more detail, with the latest biomedical technologies. “A good 30% to 40% of [the SOMA assays] are new,” Mason says.
One message from the SOMA studies, Mason says, is that the same health effects that professional astronauts experience over their long expeditions turn up among space tourists who only spend a few days in orbit.
One study confirms NASA’s research on the Kelly twins, showing how space stressed the Inspiration4 crew’s immune cells, affecting the chromatin, or chromosome material, in a type of white blood cell called monocytes. Mason says the immune system is “on high alert, aggravated.” The researchers also sequenced RNA in astronauts’ blood, finding that the stress of spaceflight affected the transcription of immune system genes, possibly reducing the body’s ability to defend against viruses.
The studies suggest men and women face different risks in space and recover at different rates after returning to Earth, says Tejaswini Mishra, a geneticist at Stanford University who previously worked on NASA’s twins study.
Women’s vision appears to be less affected by microgravity, and their monocytes returned to normal more quickly than men’s. But women space travelers appear to be more vulnerable to some cardiovascular and cancer risks. There’s still not much data available for women astronauts, though, Mishra says, and those sex differences need further study.
LINK
and tested them and the astronauts.