Astronaut Healthcare
Bed Rest Best Medicine for Astronaut Healthcare
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The University of Texas, Medical Branch at Galveston (UTMB) and the NASA Johnson Space Center (JSC) in Houston have formed a partnership critical to achieving the new vision for space exploration to the moon, Mars and beyond.
NASA JSC scientists and UTMB medical faculty and researchers have good reason to be excited about the prospects for the long-term health of astronauts in space. Scientists and educators are taking a giant leap in understanding long-term space travel on the human body, without ever having to leave the protection of the Earth’s atmosphere.
Bed rest Project Scientist and head of the Cardiovascular Laboratory at NASA JSC Dr. Janice Meck, Project Manager Brad Rhodes and their team are charged with developing and testing countermeasures to alleviate the effects of space travel on the body. With limited access to space flight at this time, long-term bed rest offers scientists the ability to compare, contrast and ameliorate the negative effects of space flight. Bed rest research is not new, but the scientists at NASA JSC have created a new standard for bed rest research that offers scientists and educators a complete picture of the effects on the entire human body. Most previous research has focused only on a single or multiple areas of the body. With this new picture scientists can better understand the effects on the total body including cardiovascular, skeletal, neurological, immune system and others, and can create better remedies to the effects of long-term space travel.
The UTMB bed rest facility, now termed the General Clinical Research Center Satellite Flight Analog Research Unit, is at the heart of this research. Volunteer subjects, both male and female, are put in a head down tilt bed rest environment for 60-90 days. This position best simulates the displacement of fluids that takes place in the body in the zero gravity environment of space. It also simulates some of the deconditioning effects, particularly on bone and muscle that are seen during space flight. These latest research studies focus on measuring, then countering the negative effects of space flight on the body which includes the diminishing of cardiovascular function, the atrophy occurring in the weight-bearing muscles and skeletal structures, neurological effects and the loss of calcium in bones, to name a few.
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| The use of a centrifuge to mimic gravity and replicate the forces as if standing in an upright position is one of the specific tests in the bed rest study. The bed rest program is critical not only to protecting the health of astronauts, but also creates exciting education and research opportunities in anti-aging and other deconditioning studies here on Earth. |
This research is not only critical to the health of astronauts in space, but also offers a promising platform to study the effects of aging on the human body. The National Institute of Health (NIH) funds UTMB’s General Clinical Research Center, which supports a variety of clinical research projects, including bed rest studies as part of its aging research. This NASA-funded study on countering the effects of long-term bed-rest may lead to some exciting breakthroughs for the elderly and otherwise bedridden patients.
The partnership between NASA, UTMB and NIH has created a multi-disciplinary standard for the study of bed rest subjects that hold promise for the health of humans in space as well as here on Earth.
Some of the specific tests in the study include the use of various medications to counteract diminished cardiovascular function, the use of exercise to counter muscle and bone atrophy as well as the use of a centrifuge to mimic gravity and replicate the forces as if standing in an upright position.
For more informationon the UTMB and NASA-JSC Bed Rest Facility, visit
http://haco.jsc.nasa.gov/projects/flight_analogs.htm.
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