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Apollo astronauts who have ventured out of the protective magnetosphere of mother Earth appear to be dying of cardiovascular disease at a far higher rate than their counterparts—both those that have stayed grounded and those that only flew in the shielding embrace of low-Earth orbit. Though the data is slim—based on only 77 astronauts total—researchers speculate that potent ionizing radiation in deep space may be to blame. That hypothesis was backed up in follow-up mouse studies that provided evidence that similar radiation exposure led to long-lasting damage to the rodents’ blood vessels. All of the data was published Thursday in the journal Scientific Reports.
[...] In the new study, [Michael] Delp [at Florida State University] and coauthors compared health data on 42 astronauts that had traveled into space—seven of which got past the magnetosphere and to the Moon—to the medical records of 35 astronauts that were grounded for their careers. The death rate from cardiovascular disease among the Apollo lunar astronauts was a whopping 43 percent, which is around four to five times the rate seen in the non-fliers and low-fliers (nine and 11 percent, respectively).
To figure out if deep-space ionizing radiation or, perhaps, weightlessness might explain the apparent jump in cardiovascular disease deaths, the researchers turned to a mouse model. Mice were either exposed to a single dose of radiation, had their hind limbs elevated to prevent weight-bearing for two weeks, or received both treatments. The researchers then let the faux-astronaut mice recover for six to seven months, which in human terms would be about 20 years.
[Continues...]
The researchers found that the mice exposed to radiation, or both radiation and simulated weightlessness, had sustained damage to their blood vessels. Namely, the mice had impaired vasodilation, or problems expanding their blood vessels to adjust for blood pressure. This can be a precursor to heart attacks and stroke. The mice that just experience simulated weightlessness, on the other hand, seemed normal.
While the rodent data complement the findings in real astronauts, the authors were clear about the limitations of the study. “Caution must be used in drawing definitive conclusions regarding specific health risks,” they concluded. The astronaut numbers are very small for an epidemiological study, there may be other factors in the space environment that could explain the possible health effects, and the type of radiation given to the mice wasn’t exactly the same as the type astronauts experience.
Delp and his colleagues are working with NASA on follow-up studies of astronauts’ health.
-- submitted from IRC
That seems to be a very small sample from which to draw any kind of conclusion, but it does suggest that outer space may be more hazardous that we thought. How will/should this affect future manned (personed?) space flight plans? With SpaceX planning to create a Mars Colonization Transport ship, maybe they would launch a hundred or so mice on a trip around the moon for their own edification?
Other coverage:
University Herald
The Guardian .
(Score: 2) by Dunbal on Monday August 01 2016, @03:18PM
Not only that, there will be skew because astronauts are SELECTED as exceptionally healthy individuals with healthy family backgrounds too. They have to die of something. Maybe it's not that there's more heart disease but there is less "other" disease.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Monday August 01 2016, @04:39PM
And before he landed on the moon, he narrowly escaped an equipment failure on a Gemini mission, survived the crash of a lunar lander simulator hovercraft thingy. Stressful.
With a side dish of to get into astronauts corps back then, for all practical purposes you had to be a test pilot. There's all kinds of crazy test pilot stories. Armstrong successfully landed a B-29 after three of its four engines exploded. That's gotta leave some kind of psychic mark, just sitting there waiting to see if a wing is going to tear off from damage or the final engine stop or who knows for quite a long time until landing. Not to mention all the test pilots who died, those guys being his coworkers. He broke the nose gear off a X1, admittedly lots of pilots did that. He almost crashed a X15 by overrunning the landing strip. He sorta kinda almost crashed a F104 like as close as you can get without actually crashing, like bounced off the ground and kept flying like a cartoon.
Of course to be a test pilot, in those days you had to be a combat fighter jet pilot, and maybe combat fighter jet pilots die of PTSD stress at an accelerated rate. People forget that Armstrong flew 80 freaking combat missions over Korea during the war. My grandpa only flew like 40 over Germany and it kinda stressed him out a bit.
And to get into combat fighter pilot school, Armstrong had to get into MIT or Perdue and get an impressive navy scholarship, no laughing matter. My dad got the same scholarship (admittedly two decades later at U Chicago) although he failed the physical for vision reasons. It was serious stuff. Like as hard as getting into the service academies, maybe even harder.
So dude is like addicted to stress his whole life, gonna catch up with him sometime.
I'm not sure if I've ever heard of an aviator who almost got killed more times than Armstrong. Of course inability to panic despite being near death is one of the reasons why he was chosen to land on the moon.
(Score: 2) by Capt. Obvious on Monday August 01 2016, @05:43PM
Yeah, but prior health is controlled by comparing to the group of astronauts that didn't leave the magnetosphere (due to scrubbed/earlier missions, etc.)
(Score: 2) by Dunbal on Tuesday August 02 2016, @02:41AM
So exceptional small sample A was checked against exceptional small sample B... yeah that's not how you do controls.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 01 2016, @06:28PM
astronauts are SELECTED as exceptionally healthy individuals
...and, even then, they missed stuff.
Deke Slayton was among the original 7, chosen in 1959.
In 1962, he was grounded because they discovered an irregular heartbeat. [google.com]
He finally flew on the Apollo-Soyuz mission in 1975 at age 51 (a record until 77 year old John Glenn shattered it in 1998).
Deke died of a brain tumor at age 69.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]