Nasa Twins Study: A multidimensional analysis of a year-long human spaceflight

http://science.sciencemag.org/content/364/6436/eaau8650

by miobrien • 7 years ago

105 22 7 years ago

science.sciencemag.org

baxtr• 7 years ago

Interesting that telomere length increased by 14% during flight! And, it can’t be related to a healthy lifestyle since they got shorter within 48hrs back on earth?

Notably, telomere length shortened rapidly upon TW’s return to Earth, within ~48 hours [FD340 ambient return to R+0 (R+ days post return); fig. S6B] and stabilized to near preflight averages within months.

stcredzero2• 7 years ago

I am not a doctor, but my understanding is that increasing telomere length could contribute to the severity of malignant tumors.

z3t4• 7 years ago

or increase life length!? Space hypersleep might become a thing after all.

kissickas• 7 years ago

Most notably, cognitive speed decreased for all tests except for the DSST, and accuracy decreased for all domains except for spatial orientation postflight. TW’s cognitive efficiency (a combination of speed and accuracy across cognitive domains) was similar pre- and inflight relative to HR but was significantly lower postflight (P = 0.0016, Student’s t test). This postflight decline in cognitive performance persisted up to 6 months postflight in both speed and accuracy domains (Fig. 10C).

This is terrifying to me. I hadn't heard of spaceflight (or the return from it) affecting cognitive function before, but they don't seem to be making it a major issue here - even after it persisted six months later. Does anyone have older sources showing the same thing? I would especially be interested in studies showing the effect over multiple flights and returns to Earth.

scottie_m2• 7 years ago

It’s not a study, but it’s been hypothesized that radiation and cosmic rays could cause lasting damage of just this sort through particle showers within the brain. Truthfully though there is very little in the way of studies for the simple fact that it’s hard to set one up for astronauts. Given how radically different the environment in space is compared to Earth though, I’m not finding this surprising. I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s just the tip of a very dangerous iceberg too, and it turns out that it takes a lot of time and sacrifice to get us to live and thrive somewhere other than Earth’s surface.

fumar• 7 years ago

We have a small sample size of humans who have been exposed to space. I wonder what human mutations will be more preferable for space travel. Physical fitness is part of the equation but so is genetic-space compatibility.

kingkawn• 7 years ago

Seems equally likely this is related to prolonged periods of relative isolation as much as being in space

mruts2• 7 years ago

They should have put the twin on earth in a simulates space station for a year. Also maybe the lack of bacterial biodiversity was a factor. I used to work analyzing DNA sequences of gut bacteria of MS patients. Surprisingly enough, bacteria affects many things about you, including cognitive performance.

inamberclad• 7 years ago

Oh hey, I was a control for part of that (specifically, short term memory and mental math).

It's possible that he was still just tired after all that. I wouldn't read too far into a study with an N of 1.

dzink• 7 years ago

I wonder if they've equally tested brain performance changes in low-stimulus environments such as an equally isolated cell in a prison on earth. Human senses exposed to variety of stimuli on earth may be keeping the brain more alert than what the space capsule offers.

mxwsn• 7 years ago

I'm impressed by the paper's 16 co-first authors and 13 co-last corresponding authors. While something like this might be more routine in a field like physics, it's a good look for biology and I hope the trend of sharing credit continues.

mruts2• 7 years ago

I got coauthored for formatting my coworker’s paper with LateX in the field of computational biology. So don’t get too excited.

dcdanko• 7 years ago

The standards for authorship in this study were pretty strict. Something like ~2 supplementary figures just for a co-authorship.

Source: I'm in one of the labs on this paper (but not one of the authors)

RJIb8RBYxzAMX9u• 7 years ago

[S]patial orientation and motor praxis accuracy increased...cognitive speed decreased.

It's too bad they didn't measure if TW's become empathic vs. HR. I guess we'll never know how well he's at piloting giant robots.

mirimir• 7 years ago

It's interesting that there's no mention of sperm count.

I mean, given that the US government funded studies where state prisoners in Oregon and Washington sat on X-ray machines. After tracking the time course of sperm-count recovery, prisoners' testicles were typically removed. This was back in the 60s, in support of the space program.

https://bioethicsarchive.georgetown.edu/achre/commeet/meet8/...

Nasa Twins Study: A multidimensional analysis of a year-long human spaceflight

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