A new set of studies offers the most comprehensive look at spaceflight health since NASA’s Twins Study

Solely about 600 individuals have ever traveled to space. The vast majority of astronauts over the previous six many years have been middle-aged males on short-duration missions of fewer than 20 days.

As we speak, with personal, industrial and multinational spaceflight suppliers and flyers coming into the market, we’re witnessing a brand new period of human spaceflight. Missions have ranged from minutes, hours and days to months.

As humanity seems to be forward to returning to the moon over the approaching decade, space exploration missions shall be for much longer, with many extra space vacationers and even space vacationers. This additionally signifies that a wider range of individuals will expertise the intense atmosphere of space—extra girls and other people of various ethnicities, ages and well being standing.

Since individuals reply otherwise to the distinctive stressors and exposures of space, researchers in space well being, like me, search to raised perceive the human well being results of spaceflight. With such data, we are able to determine how one can assist astronauts keep wholesome each whereas they’re in space and as soon as they return to Earth.

As a part of the historic NASA Twins Study, in 2019, my colleagues and I printed groundbreaking analysis on how one yr on board the Worldwide House Station impacts the human physique.

I’m a radiation cancer biologist in Colorado State College’s Division of Environmental and Radiological Well being Sciences. I’ve spent the previous few years persevering with to construct on that earlier analysis in a sequence of papers lately published across the portfolio of Nature journals.

These papers are a part of the Space Omics and Medical Atlas package of manuscripts, information, protocols and repositories that symbolize the biggest assortment ever assembled for aerospace drugs and space biology. Over 100 establishments from 25 international locations contributed to the coordinated launch of a variety of spaceflight information.

The NASA Twins Examine

NASA’s Twins Study seized on a novel analysis alternative.

NASA chosen astronaut Scott Kelly for the company’s first one-year mission, throughout which he spent a yr on board the Worldwide House Station from 2015 into 2016. Over the identical time interval, his equivalent twin brother, Mark Kelly, a former astronaut and present U.S. senator representing Arizona, remained on Earth.

My workforce and I examined blood samples collected from the dual in space and his genetically matched twin again on Earth earlier than, throughout and after spaceflight. We discovered that Scott’s telomeres—the protecting caps on the ends of chromosomes, very similar to the plastic tip that retains a shoelace from fraying—lengthened, fairly unexpectedly, throughout his yr in space.

When Scott returned to Earth, nevertheless, his telomeres shortly shortened. Over the next months, his telomeres recovered however have been nonetheless shorter after his journey than they’d been earlier than he went to space.

As you grow old, your telomeres shorten due to quite a lot of elements, together with stress. The size of your telomeres can serve as a biological indicator of your threat for creating age-related circumstances resembling dementia, heart problems and most cancers.

In a separate study, my workforce studied a cohort of 10 astronauts on six-month missions on board the Worldwide House Station. We additionally had a management group of age- and sex-matched contributors who stayed on the bottom.

We measured telomere length earlier than, throughout and after spaceflight and once more discovered that telomeres have been longer throughout spaceflight after which shortened upon return to Earth. Total, the astronauts had many extra brief telomeres after spaceflight than they’d earlier than.

One of many different Twins Examine investigators, Christopher Mason, and I conducted another telomere study—this time with twin high-altitude mountain climbers—a considerably comparable excessive atmosphere on Earth.

We discovered that whereas climbing Mount Everest, the climbers’ telomeres have been longer, and after they descended, their telomeres shortened. Their twins who remained at low altitude did not expertise the identical adjustments in telomere size. These outcomes point out that it isn’t the space station’s microgravity that led to the telomere size adjustments we noticed within the astronauts—different culprits, resembling elevated radiation publicity, are extra doubtless.

Civilians in space

In our latest study, we studied telomeres from the crew on board SpaceX’s 2021 Inspiration4 mission. This mission had the primary all-civilian crew, whose ages spanned 4 many years. The entire crew members’ telomeres lengthened through the mission, and three of the 4 astronauts additionally exhibited telomere shortening as soon as they have been again on Earth.

What’s notably fascinating about these findings is that the Inspiration4 mission lasted solely three days. So, not solely do scientists now have constant and reproducible information on telomeres’ response to spaceflight, however we additionally understand it occurs shortly. These outcomes counsel that even brief journeys, like a weekend getaway to space, shall be related to adjustments in telomere size.

Scientists nonetheless do not completely perceive the well being impacts of such adjustments in telomere size. We’ll want extra analysis to determine how each lengthy and brief telomeres would possibly have an effect on an astronaut’s long-term well being.

Telomeric RNA

In another paper, we confirmed that the Inspiration4 crew—in addition to Scott Kelly and the high-altitude mountain climbers—exhibited elevated ranges of telomeric RNA, termed TERRA.

Telomeres encompass numerous repetitive DNA sequences. These are transcribed into TERRA, which contributes to telomere construction and helps them do their job.

Along with laboratory research, these findings inform us that telomeres are being broken throughout spaceflight. Whereas there may be nonetheless rather a lot we do not know, we do know that telomeres are particularly delicate to oxidative stress. So, the persistent oxidative injury that astronauts expertise when uncovered to space radiation across the clock doubtless contributes to the telomeric responses we observe.

We additionally wrote a review article with a more futuristic perspective of how higher understanding telomeres and growing old would possibly start to tell the power of people to not solely survive long-duration space journey but in addition to thrive and even colonize different planets. Doing so would require people to breed in space and future generations to develop up in space. We do not know if that is even attainable—but.

Plant telomeres in space

My colleagues and I contributed different work to the House Omics and Medical Atlas bundle, as effectively, together with a paper published in Nature Communications. The examine workforce, led by Texas A&M biologist Dorothy Shippen and Ohio College biologist Sarah Wyatt, discovered that, not like individuals, vegetation flown in space didn’t have longer telomeres throughout their time on board the Worldwide House Station.

The vegetation did, nevertheless, ramp up their production of telomerase, the enzyme that helps preserve telomere size.

As anybody who’s seen “The Martian” is aware of, vegetation will play a vital function in long-term human survival in space. This discovering means that vegetation are maybe extra naturally suited to face up to the stressors of space than people.

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