WASHINGTON : Evidence is growing about the many ways that traveling in the microgravity environment of space tampers with the human body, with new research showing how it dials down the activity of genes in white blood cells crucial to the immune system.A study involving 14 astronauts who spent 4-1/2 to 6
WASHINGTON : Evidence is growing about the many ways that traveling in the microgravity environment of space tampers with the human body, with new research showing how it dials down the activity of genes in white blood cells crucial to the immune system.
"A weaker immunity increases the risk of infectious diseases limiting astronauts' ability to perform their very demanding work in space. If an infection or an immune-related condition was to evolve to a severe state requiring medical care, astronauts while in space would have limited access to care and medication," said molecular biologist Odette Laneuville of the University of Ottawa in Canada, lead author of the research published in the journal Frontiers in Immunology.
Gene expression in 247 genes in leukocytes was at about one third the normal levels while in space, the study found. This occurred within the first few days in space, but then remained at a stable level. The genes typically returned to normal behavior within about a month of an astronaut's return to Earth.
This altered behavior, the researchers said, may result from a phenomenon called"fluid shift" in which blood in the absence of Earth's gravitational pull is redistributed from the lower to the upper part of the body. It is unlikely that greater solar radiation exposure in space was the culprit, they added.Scientists previously documented astronauts experiencing immune dysfunction in space.
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