{"id":18141,"date":"2019-02-15T17:18:48","date_gmt":"2019-02-15T09:18:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/after-twin-astronaut-tests-nasa-readies-new-wave-of-studies-on-space-health-risks\/"},"modified":"2019-02-15T17:18:48","modified_gmt":"2019-02-15T09:18:48","slug":"after-twin-astronaut-tests-nasa-readies-new-wave-of-studies-on-space-health-risks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/after-twin-astronaut-tests-nasa-readies-new-wave-of-studies-on-space-health-risks\/","title":{"rendered":"After twin-astronaut tests, NASA readies new wave of studies on space health risks"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_480704\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-480704\" style=\"width: 630px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full-width wp-image-480704\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/190215-kelly1-630x451.jpg\" alt=\"Scott Kelly flu shot\" width=\"630\" height=\"451\" srcset=\"https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/190215-kelly1-630x451.jpg 630w, https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/190215-kelly1-768x550.jpg 768w, https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/190215-kelly1-1260x903.jpg 1260w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 630px) 100vw, 630px\"><figcaption data-nosnippet=\"\" id=\"caption-attachment-480704\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">NASA astronaut Scott Kelly gives himself a flu shot in 2015 during his nearly yearlong stay on the International Space Station. (NASA Photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>WASHINGTON, D.C.&nbsp;\u2014 Almost three years after NASA astronaut Scott Kelly returned from spending nearly a year in orbit, researchers are still poring over the data collected during an unprecedented study comparing his health with that of his earthbound twin brother.<\/p>\n<p>They say the comparison hasn\u2019t raised any red flags about long-term spaceflight on the International Space Station. \u201cOn the whole, it\u2019s encouraging,\u201d Craig Kundrot, director of NASA\u2019s&nbsp;Space Life and Physical Sciences Research and Applications Division, said here today at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.<\/p>\n<p>But the studies have raised questions about the potential impact of exposure to weightlessness and space radiation during longer missions to the moon and Mars.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s mostly green flags, and maybe a handful of things that are roughly like yellow flags, things just to keep an eye on,\u201d said Christopher Mason, a researcher at&nbsp;Weill Cornell Medicine who serves as the principal investigator for the Twins Study.<\/p>\n<p>Those yellow flags include a hyperactive immune system response, a heightened rate of DNA repair in Kelly\u2019s genes and higher levels of mitochondria in his blood. Mason and other researchers reported those health effects more than a year ago, but they still don\u2019t fully understand what\u2019s behind them.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt could be a good, adaptive response to spaceflight, with no permanent consequences, because you\u2019d expect the body to make some adjustments,\u201d Kundrot said. \u201cOr it could be sending things down a path that would be a concern. We just don\u2019t know yet.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Mason noted that Kelly\u2019s immune system kicked into overdrive after he gave himself a flu shot on the space station&nbsp;\u2014 as part of an experiment to gauge how the immune system would react. \u201cAll indications seem to be that the immune system is functioning fine,\u201d Mason said. \u201cIt isn\u2019t even necessarily indicative of disregulation \u2026 \u2018hyperactivation\u2019 would be how I\u2019d describe it.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Some researchers have wondered whether astronauts should undergo gene therapy to cope with the stresses of long-term spaceflight. \u201cThe answer is probably \u2018not necessarily,\u2019 because this might be how the body adapts to microgravity,\u201d Mason said. \u201cIt\u2019s just something to keep an eye on.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><iframe title=\"Precision Immunization: NASA Studies Immune Response to Flu Vaccine\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/UdC2IC_EGCI?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen=\"\" data-ratio=\"0.5625\" data-width=\"800\" data-height=\"450\" style=\"display: block; margin: 0px; width: 800px; height: 450px;\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Once Kelly returned to Earth in March 2016, most of the shifts in how his genes were activated \u2014 a phenomenon known as gene expression \u2014 quickly reverted to the pattern that existed before his yearlong spaceflight. But 7 percent of the changes noted in gene expression persisted all the way up to the end of the study period, six months after the flight ended. (In some quarters, that gave rise to the false impression that 7 percent of Kelly\u2019s DNA had changed.)<\/p>\n<p>NASA\u2019s Twins Study was designed to compare Scott Kelly\u2019s vital signs and gene expression patterns with those of his identical twin brother, Mark Kelly, who also became an astronaut but had retired from NASA by the time Scott began his yearlong stint on the space station.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s long been known that spaceflight can be hazardous to your health: For example, weightlessness can cause loss of bone mass and muscle mass, and hurt eyesight.<\/p>\n<p>And that\u2019s not all, Kundrot said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou have the radiation,\u201d he said. \u201cYou have an altered atmospheric environment&nbsp;\u2014 there\u2019s higher CO2 levels on board. You have maybe more stress associated with the event. From a cognition perspective, you\u2019re in a very limited environment, the size of a house. \u2026 There are a multitude of things.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Radiation could be the biggest cause for concern when astronauts take on long-duration missions to Mars. Previous studies have suggested that the radiation levels encountered during an extended Mars mission could exceed NASA\u2019s current guidelines for lifetime exposure, with the result of raising an astronaut\u2019s cancer risk.<\/p>\n<p>Even in the Twins Study, Mason said researchers saw heightened gene activation along \u201cthe normal DNA pathways that you would observe when DNA is damaged in ionizing radiation.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The detailed findings from the Twins Study will soon come out in a series of peer-reviewed papers. In the meantime, NASA is planning a new set of studies focusing on how organisms adapt to the deep-space environment.<\/p>\n<p>Four biological experiments will be packed aboard NASA\u2019s Orion capsule and sent far beyond the moon\u2019s orbit during a three-week test flight currently scheduled for 2020. The uncrewed test flight, known as Exploration Mission-1 or EM-1, will also mark the first launch of a heavy-lift NASA rocket known as the Space Launch System.<\/p>\n<p>Today NASA said the EM-1 experiments will include:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Life Beyond Earth: Effect of Spaceflight on Seeds with Improved Nutritional Value:&nbsp;<\/strong>This study, led by Federica Brandizzi of Michigan State University, will characterize how spaceflight affects nutrients in plant seeds, with the goal of gaining new knowledge that will help increase the nutritional value of plants grown in spaceflight.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Fuel to Mars: <\/strong>Timothy Hammond of the Institute for Medical Research is planning a set of studies to identify the genes that contribute to the deep-space survival of a type of photosynthetic algae known as Chlamydomonas reinhardtii.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Investigating the Roles of Melanin and DNA Repair on Adaptation and Survivability of Fungi in Deep Space: <\/strong>The Naval Research Laboratory\u2019s Zheng Wang and colleagues will use the fungus Aspergillus nidulans to investigate the radioprotective effects of melanin and the DNA damage response.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Multi-Generational Genome-Wide Yeast Fitness Profiling Beyond and Below Earth\u2019s van Allen Belts:&nbsp;<\/strong>This investigation will use yeast as a model organism to identify genes that help organisms adapt to the conditions of deep-space flight on the EM-1 mission, as well as spaceflight in low Earth orbit aboard the International Space Station. The lead researcher is Luis Zea of the&nbsp;University of Colorado at Boulder.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>NASA astronaut Scott Kelly gives himself a flu shot in 2015 during his nearly yearlong stay on the International Space Station. (NASA Photo) WASHINGTON, D.C.&nbsp;\u2014 Almost three years after NASA astronaut Scott Kelly returned from spending nearly a year in orbit, researchers are still poring over the data collected during an unprecedented study comparing his [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[5030,4858,4913,190,3726,21],"class_list":["post-18141","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-a-year-in-space","tag-aaas","tag-life-in-space","tag-nasa","tag-scott-kelly","tag-space"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18141"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18141"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18141\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18141"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18141"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18141"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}