This article is part of Nature Outlook: VisionIndependent editor created by Astlolas Pharma’s financial support. About this content.
Over the next 15 years, NASA expects to launch the mission to Mars. But long journey creates a challenge. It is not at least from a mysterious disease that changes the vision of astronauts. The passage of long terms in the microgravity of space can cause changes in the eye, including inflammation in the region that extends the optical nerve; Normally equal the back of the round of the rounding organ; wrinkles that emerge emerge on the back of the retina; And those who focus the eye changes the refractive index. Together, these changes have doubled in space flow neuro-okult syndrome (sans). Although the study is more than a decade, the researchers still do not know what it affects, with the highest risk or how to prevent or treat.
Tyson Brunstetter, at the Texas Johnson Space Center, when he read the first report on the US Army in 2011. The situation seemed fascinating, but he had no significant obstacles in space. “I told him,” it’s NASA. They will represent it in six months’. And yet, I am, a part of the team trying to figure out exactly what is going on. “
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Nasa believes his “red risk” is his “red risk” due to its potential severity and the number of astronauts that may be revealed. Other high-priority risks are radiating exposure, difficulty maintaining changes in mental health and proper nutrition.
After ten days in the eyes of astronauts in astronauts, doctors believe that the risk increases as long as it passes more time in microgravity. So far, sans has been a problem mostly for those who do six months of international space station (ISS). The journey to Mars is much longer, approximately nine months in each direction – they can cause damage to astronauts to see what they are doing, perhaps forever.
Not everyone who enters space does not develop sans. About two-thirds of astronauts in long ISS missions change visual aquatic, especially in the nearby view. Only a third of these cases is serious enough to earn sans designation. Changes that can be detected in a study, such as an enlarged blind place and a thickened retina, due to the inflammation of the optical nerve (known with the Edema of Optical Disk).
Most of the changes associated with the syndrome seems to be resolved after returning to the ground. The most serious case of inflammation will last about 12 months usually gravity, according to Brunstetter. And even though the turns of global eye equalization and refractive indices may be permanent, these changes can be compensated with recipe lenses. In fact, NASA supplies astronauts with the one who calls space-catching glasses that calls glasses of different capacities. “No one has a vision loss due to sans,” Brunstetter says.
In ISS, the European Space Agency (ESA) Matthias Maurer uses ophthalmic lens attached to a tablet to send photos of his retina. These images were taken as part of the ESA and the German Aerospace Center of the Aerospace Center.
Concern, however, can increase longer missions problems. If the optic disc edema is long enough, the enlarged blind spot can begin to interfere with the sight, Brunstetter says. Wrinkles, wrinkles known as corporoid folds can also be more problems. These are usually pasted after the Astronauts came home. So far, Brunstetter says, the fold caused no one’s perspective, because they may not occur in part of the eye that may have problems. But longer places can increase the number of folds in space, so it will potentially distort the sight in the photo created by the camera-frame film. “That’s the problem you can’t fix only putting a pair of glasses,” he said.
Come to a head
The main suspect in the causal of Serna is the fluid that takes place in microgravity. On the ground, gravity leads blood and cerebrospinal fluid to the ground, they push hearts and other muscles across the body. Without gravity, more fluid than usual is collected in the head.
When they first described the syndrome in 2011, NASA scientists thought it had caused great pressure on the head from excessive fluids. But that should not explain why clinically significant problems only astronauts. “If it were as easy as you enter the flight and fluid, it happened in your mind,” says Scott Smith, a nutritionist in the Johnson Space Center that learts Sanskains. It also seems that pressure on the head does not get high enough to bring these changes – at least not in itself.
“If we are wrong, everything you’ve done to give people vitamins and turn their peppers”. -Scott Smith, nutritionist
Brunstetter believes that light pressure rise is possible if they can cause problems for a long time. Changes in fluid swells the blood vessels in the head, which can cause blood supply to the back of the eye, says. Another option is that it changes metabolic activity in cells, hindering such sodium exchange, JoshuaG Og, an ophthalmologist, specializes in the Michigan University. Ann Tsung is looking for NASA flight surgeon, whether the GLP-1 agonists are trying to test.
Another potential of guilty is carbon dioxide, and their high levels increases blood flow in the brain and increase the pressure. CO2 is generally higher than the ISS on the ground, and could still be higher in sleeping compartments. Land studies, lying with volunteers, to simulate microgravity, to simulate microgravity, they indicate that the higher CO2 levels increase sans signals. However, the sans rate has not fallen engineers to improve CO2 scrubbing from ISS.
Smith suspects that Sans CO2, vitamin deficiency and genetics involve an interplay. He and his team discovered that astronauts develop the Sans are higher levels of a amino acid that know more than those who avoid the syndrome. High levels of this amino acid are known to increase the risk of coronary artery and the risk of blood paintings, and the deficiency of the diet can cause vitamin B12 or vitamin B12. Homocysteine also participates in the functions of living cells known as carbon-by-way name and further studies revealing differences in genes related to this metabolic function between various astronauts. Four ‘risk Alleles were identified; At least three Astronauts saw more than those who change the thickness of the retina, or more than two. “What we happen to have had greater demands of their genetics, becoming the most functionally called defensitive,” says Smith.
The more evidence of this idea came the kindness of some old notes. Smith and his team discovered Astronaut, who ever reported a few years ago, the most notable sakel sakel in Sans Sair were treated with vitamins of NASA flight surgeons. Astronaut retinal thick has reduced after treatment. When Smith studied his genes later, he found that he had four risks.
That’s not evidence, SMIT says. “It’s case study. You can’t prove anything. But I’m sure.” Coincidentally, CO2 levels also reduced during the astronaut period. These events, however, will give 16 astronauts in more than several missions. “If we are wrong, all you have done to people give vitamins and pie,” says Smith. But if they are fine, he said, the way to alleviate a red risk of NASA will disappear.
Dealing with microgravity
Prevails to prevent SANA can be more mechanical form, researchers try to deal with the consequences of microgravity in the body. The Russian Space Agency has a device called Chibis Suit, surrounded by the lower body and uses some fluid to draw down the legs. Equipment is volume, but the time that passes inside people must be adapted to physiology. Astronauts can also carry voenoconstrictive thighs who act like loose tours. All these contrasts require more tests.
MicroGravity may cause other problems in the astronauts in addition to the loss of muscle mass and bone density. It is a wider approach to protect against these issues, providing artificial gravity, Ethan Waisberg, the University of Cambridge University, United Kingdom. The concept is known in science fiction, especially in the 1968 film 2001: Space OdysseyIn which Astronaut Jupiter Jog were connected to the form of a centrifugal created within his residents to keep the muscles. “Simulating the strength of the earth’s gravity,” Waisberge said, “We can recover the normal distribution of fluids in our astronauts.”
Building a centrifugal in a spaceship or rotating the entire labor, presents engineering challenges. The smaller the circumference of the centric, the faster the gravity of the Earth could affect the gravity and cause fast rotation to astronauts. However, a large centrifugal would add the weight, cost and complexity of the spacecraft. Waisberg says that a smaller alternative can be a centrifugal human being, in which an astronaut is full of bikes around a wheel, like the hamsters that exercise in a cage.
Despite the difficulty finding the cause and treatment of Sner, Smith says researchers will continue to hunt the answers. “There are many people away with ideas,” he noted. “If this was easy, someone would figure it out now.”
