The Travel to spaceeven of short duration, are a challenge for the healthwith changes at many levels, although much of it is normalized upon return, according to twenty new studies that include data from the first crew composed only of non-professional astronauts.
A hundred scientific institutions participated in the studies published by several journals of the Nature group, whose results represent the largest compendium of data on aerospace medicine and space biology. Traveling to space induces molecular, cellular and physiological changes and poses countless biomedical challenges to the human body, which will become increasingly relevant as more people venture out.
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The researchers have used data from stays of up to one year in the International Space Station (ISS)but the novelty is the analysis of those collected in Inspiration 4, the first private mission with a crew of only civilian astronauts. In 2021, two women and two men spent three days 590 kilometers from Earth (about 200 above the ISS), where they carried out various experiments and took samples of blood, saliva, feces or skin biopsies.
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That short-duration mission in low Earth orbit caused changes on multiple levels, some of which reflected those of longer flightsalthough “did not pose a significant risk to the health of the crew”, according to one of the investigations.
Most changes in telomeres (chromosome ends), blood chemistry, proteins, or gene expression return “back to normal in a few months” after his return, he highlighted in a press conference Christopher Mason, from the New York School of Medicine and author of several articles.
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Manson said that this return to base levels occurred in a crew “who are not especially Olympic athletes nor who train for ten years to go to space”. Although 95% of the markers return to their reference value in the months following the end of the mission, some proteins, genes and cytokines seem to be activated only during recovery and persist for at least three months.
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This suggests that readaptation to Earth activates a series of reparative mechanisms that help to recover, at least in part, the physiological stress imposed by exposure to the space environment.
The greatest impacts on the human body occur during launch and re-entry to Earth, due to the variation in gravity, said the Mexican Emmanuel Urquieta, medical director of the American Translational Research Institute for Space Health (TRISH). The article in which Urquieta collaborated focused on the first phases of adaptation to flight at an anatomical, cellular, physiological and cognitive level, the latter parameter in which “there were no significant changes”.
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The first are the neurovestibular changeswhich have to do with orientation, causing dizziness and vomiting that affect 80% of people, then – he added – those related to blood and fluids occur that are redistributed to the thorax, neck and head. Urquieta pointed out that the study sample is small, four people, and that more data is needed on the same parameters in future flights..
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The immune system and old age
Other studies focused on the effects of weightlessness on the immune system, combining data from simulations, astronauts and mice on the ISS. The results point to the reactivation of latent viruses or infections, even on short flights. The different cells of the immune system in the peripheral blood are shaped by microgravity, especially lymphocytes and monocytes, which are the main protagonists of immunity.
This work, signed among others by the Buck Institute for Research on Aging (USA), investigated possible compounds to reverse the effects of microgravity and pointed to quercetin as promising to mitigate these damages. Changes in the immune system during space travel resemble those of aging on Earthso this knowledge can be used to design treatments for the immune dysfunction that accompanies old age.
EFE
