Spaceflight May Age the Immune System Prematurely in Astronauts

As NASA and Mars One continues steps toward longer-term missions for humans in space, it's important to assess how the environment of space will impact astronauts. Now, scientists have found that spaceflight may be associated with the accelerated aging of the immune system.

"This study shows that a model of spaceflight conditions could not only be used to test the efficacy of molecules to improve immune responses following a spaceflight in astronauts, but also in the elderly and bed-ridden populations on Earth," said Jean-Pol Frippiat, one of the researchers, in a news release. "This model could also help understanding the aging of the immune system called immunoscenescence."

In order to see how spaceflight impacts the human body, the researchers used a ground-based model called hindlimb unloading (HU). This model simulates some of the effects of spaceflight on mice. The researchers analyzed bone parameters and the frequency of cells that will give birth to B lymphocytes in the bone marrow of young mice, old mice and mice subjected during three weeks to hindlimb unloading.

So what did they find? It turns out that bone changes and changes in the production of B lymphocytes in the bone marrow of HU mice were very similar to those observed in old mice. The study also shows that HU could be used to potentially help improve the understanding of the relationship between bone remodeling and B cell production in the bones, both in the context of spaceflight and normal aging on Earth.

"Getting to Mars and beyond promises to be a huge task, requiring contributions from almost every scientific discipline," said Gerald Weissmann, editor-in-chief of The FASEB Journal, in a news release. "For biologists and medical researchers, knowing how altered gravity affect our immune system from challenges aloft can be already studied on Earth. Fortunately for biologists, it's not rocket science."

The findings are published in The FASEB  Journal.

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