As we move closer to space travel becoming more feasible for the average person (hopefully in the coming decades), physicians will have to face the reality of astronauts experiencing health problems beyond the borders of a hospital, where there is less help available. While astronauts are selected to be in good health and unlikely to develop severe health complications while traveling, one will eventually suffer an adverse event. Previously healthy athletes’ hearts have been known to stop during exercise on rare occasions, possibly due to undiagnosed heart defects, such as hypertrophic cardiomyopathy. Fortunately, it is a possibility that NASA considers.

We also need to understand more ways to prevent such an event from occurring so we do not have to rely on such contingencies. A group of Japanese researchers sought to find answers for this problem. Will it make space travel safer? Remember to give my article claps and read it all the way through to support me as a writer!

Heart attacks and strokes are ultimately caused by fat deposits in your blood vessels breaking apart, driving a series of reactions that eventually obstruct the vessel, starving your heart or brain of essential oxygen. A way to better understand this process, so we can keep you (and astronauts) safe using the wonders of modern medicine, is to know how the genes in your blood vessels are affected by external triggers, such as a fat plaque deciding it had enough or microgravity. This is where it gets interesting when considering space travel!

A group of scientists created a device called a clinostat that can mimic a low-gravity environment by rotating the cells in blood vessels at a particular rate (so less need to conduct expensive space station experiments). They found that we have gravity-sensitive genes in our blood vessels that produce more or less of their downstream products (think of DNA like a conveyor belt where DNA is used to make other things) when gravity changes! But how is this evidence convincing and exciting?

The group found that the gene SLCO2A1 appeared to be the gravity-dependent gene (stay tuned because there will likely turn out to be other gravity-dependent genes). This gene is notable because others have found its expression linked with cardiovascular disease (like heart attacks) and high blood pressure. While more research, perhaps using mathematical approaches as I use in my genetics research, will be required to clarify the intersection between this gene, heart disease, and gravity changes, it is a good step toward understanding how being in space changes our bodies! So what needs to happen now?

Due to the nature of being among the first to explore this piece of science, the group focused on genes that are more commonly expressed. Future studies could study the expression of all roughly 20,000 genes to see if there is anything else interesting that changes. This study used only cells, which can behave differently in mammals like us or mice. Finding a way to non-invasively measure blood vessel gene expression in these more complex models could further clarify the role of this gene or other genes that could be contributing. There is still a lot that we can do. That is what makes science so exciting!

Aerospace medicine and our understanding of how being in space changes the body has made progress. Unanswered questions could also help us navigate the stars while ensuring travelers are well cared for. Studies such as this help understand how being in an unfamiliar place can change our bodies, thus offering targets to monitor as they could influence astronaut health or risk of developing diseases down the road. Give it time, and we’ll have a better sense of it all, making your orbital flight that much safer.

If you liked this article, be sure to give me claps and subscribe. It would be fantastic to have you as a follower! Let me know your thoughts on aerospace medicine or your thoughts on the article in the comments. Thanks for reading! 🙂

The post Gene Expression Changes in Heart Cells: A New Threat to Astronaut Health? appeared first on Medika Life.

We will visit Mars in person in the coming decades, a months-long trip one-way. As I look forward to playing Bethesda Game Studio’s Starfield after recently finishing all nine books of Iain M. Banks’s Culture series, I think about the plans that incorporate even further destinations. Being a physician-scientist, it is hard not to think of the challenges that come from long-distance travel! While some health concerns of space travel are already reasonably well known, such as muscle deconditioning or the bombardment from cosmic radiation, several conditions have not yet been considered hazards in space travel. This is mainly because the technologies that would make them a reasonable point of alarm for an astronaut have not been invented yet!

Eventually, there will be a way for everything that a human needs to be synthesized onboard a spaceship. Means of accomplishing this are already being investigated, such as through harnessing microorganisms, like bacteria, towards producing everything a human could need, like oxygen, food, and raw materials. As for putting a human in “stasis” for a long journey, artificial hibernation has been academically engaged as a concept, making applications more feasible for the future (although it will take time to evaluate such a procedure due to ethical and safety concerns).

So, let us say that we can keep some humans alive indefinitely in a space shuttle. What else do we need to think of? As a physician and Alzheimer’s disease researcher, I think you can guess one such thing.

Alzheimer’s disease is the most common form of dementia, typically affecting around 10% of individuals older than 65. One’s risk of Alzheimer’s increases as one gets older, with one in three over age 85 having the disease. Alzheimer’s is believed to be caused by the progressive death of neurons, the cells in your brain that contribute to memory and your ability to function.

If I were to jump on a NASA mission right now, travel time to the nearest star system, Alpha Centauri, is a greater concern (130,000 years!). In 2017, NASA proposed a new technology for space travel called solar sails, which could speed this up (44 years). Despite this design remaining a concept and its construction proposed for over 40 years from now (and likely not going to host an astronaut), what would happen if I boarded this vehicle in my seventies and placed in stasis until I arrived?

With every year of traveling, you could count on the risk of developing Alzheimer’s persisting. Unless hibernation technologies find a way to prevent neuronal cell death or the natural deposition of debris in the brain as we age, it is possible that I could wake up having Alzheimer’s! Imagine that, after traveling further than anyone ever had before? While there are “modifiable” risks for Alzheimer’s that could arguably be addressed to reduce the risk of disease, like reducing the risk of blood vessel disease through a healthy diet and exercise, one can only do so much.

One day, we will have to face the music of how we will keep our astronauts healthy on long trips. As with other health conditions, which I will touch on in future articles (be sure to give this article a clap and subscribe), medical research will have to address possible problems arising across body systems rather than a singular goal of having our own intergalactic visitor survive a long trip because there is a lot more to life than simply living, as many of us could agree.

There is reason to be optimistic! In the Alzheimer’s and Aging research fields that I am part of, energy (including mine) and money are going towards finding out how we can help people live longer and better. While science takes longer to yield results than we would like (even AI took decades to develop before it was ready for consumers as ChatGPT), progress is always happening, and getting human life out among the stars is something that people care about.

Let me know your thoughts on prioritizing traveling among the stars! Do you think we should try going as far as possible or focus more on taking it slow?

The post Alzheimer’s Will Limit Human Space Travel appeared first on Medika Life.