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Medicines Lose Effectiveness In Space
An anonymous reader writes "Scientists at the Johnson Space Center have shown that the effectiveness of drugs declines more rapidly in space. Engineers are working on a project which could bring space travel to the general public but experiments suggest that the health hazards facing astronauts may be greater than previously thought. Astronauts on long space missions may not be able to take paracetamol to treat a headache or antibiotics to fight infection, a study has found. I wonder if diseases are also affected?"
From TFA:
The research team investigated whether the unique environment of space - including radiation, excessive vibrations, microgravity, a carbon dioxide rich environment and variations in humidity and temperature - affected drugs' effectiveness.
How about putting them in a box?
Apart from radiation I don't see how the other environmental issues are unique to space.
How would microgravity affect chemical compounds? We've known for a while about bone decalcification and muscle atrophy but I always ascribed such things to the fact that astronauts aren't standing on solid ground or exercising as they are on Earth. It's not as though the proteins and whatnot in their bodies are discombobulating while they're up there, is it?
If God forks the Universe every time you roll a die, he'd better have a damned good memory.
For those of us wondering, here in the United States.
One thing to keep in mind is that the same chemical protein have different effects depending on how it is folded...
comment first, facts later. http://chem.tufts.edu/AnswersInScience/RelativityofWrong.htm
A: At least one is.
Salmonella in Space Get Even Nastier
http://www.space.com/6481-salmonella-space-nastier.html
If you haven't gotten the infection before you came on, you're not going to get sick from the microbes in space.
This is not true. From a relevant Wikipedia article: The human body, consisting of about 100 trillion cells, carries about ten times as many microorganisms in the intestines. Any of this including the most benign cyanobacteria can lead to major infection. In fact, not taking in sufficient bacteria from the environment can be a cause of disease. It's an old disproved myth that "Avoiding illness is as simple as avoiding microbes."
Additionally, this doesn't account for latent diseases like herpes and many other viruses. Then again ..... I'm an idiot in medical school ......
...... and idiots rule the world....
As I responded elsewhere in the comments:
We needn't think that microgravity affects chemical compounds to explain this. Many more gross physical quantities are often dominant in the effects of drugs. For example, bioavailability (absorption) of drugs can dominate with digoxin, aspirin etc. Thus changing GI motility is a big issue and could be affected by a lack of gravity. We STILL don't know how our GI tract separates gas from liquid and this could easily be gravity dependent.
Other systems dependent on gravity include veins (the return of blood is gravity dependent especially in the legs) and lymphatic pumping (which is mainly motivated by eccentric/isometric or various contractions of the muscles that occur less in space. For many drugs the limiting factor is proper dispersal in the body (e.g. haloperidol, NSAIDS, antibiotics). Then again, I'm an idiot medical student.......
...... and idiots rule the world....
Radiation and other such environmental factor certainly would affect the "shelf life" and effectiveness of all molecular compounds., so in this case packaging and storage would have to be controlled. Apart from these concerns the way molecules travel through the GI tract, the blood stream , the blood brain barrier and in fact all cells is most likely affected by gravity, so that micro gravity certainly would cause these factors to be different and likely produce unpredictable results. It should also be noted that drug metabolism and cell signaling pathways are also likely affected by microgravity and increased CO2 levels.
The simple answer is that we just don't know because the data set is very limited. The real solution would be to do more research in these environments because it is just as likely that while negative effects may be observed positive beneficial results are just as likely and may lead to a new and fundamentally different understanding of drug and cellular function.
Ok, then just take acetaminophen instead!
Give 'em a tube of chicken soup, they'll be alright.
Give em a marijuana brownie for anything not covered by the soup.
Quit worrying about it.
*Repent!Quit Your Job!Slack Off!The World Ends Tomorrow and You May Die!
Um... but such changes CAN occur. One of the developments for the Crew Healthcare System included the ability to use available water supplies from stored, or recycled water, to make intravenous solutions, using fluid concentrates (we tried, but the powdered chemicals just don't disolve well and have to be manipulated). The system used a multiple-component water pass-through purification system to prodce at least 50 Mohm water that had also been subjected to ultrafiltration, to assure cellular contaminents such as endotoxins were removed. The system did not use high pressure or heat sterilization, and was demonstrated to meet US FDA and USP standards for ultrapure water for injection, and intravenous fluids.
Water reuse for long-duration spaceflight missions is already achievable, with only the stigma of using recycled water for drinking and medical uses remaining as a potential problem. The processed water is considerably cleaner than anything you'll drink in a conventional water supply, and certainly better than the tap water at Cape Kennedy.
Never ascribe to malice that which can adequately be explained by tenure.
While I can't speak to Kirk's problems, the Shuttle isn't a sterile environment. It is kept as clean as possible, mainly because they don't want any more particulate contamination to fly, and get circulated in microgravity than necessary, but you can't get rid of all of it, Historically, on Shuttle, they set up a fan between Middeck and Flight Deck, in the starboard access area, and used a filter on the inlet side. It captured fine particulate matter... and pens, etc., that were dropped or otherwise lost by the crew on-orbit. It all ended up, eventually, in the filter.
Also, while there's a 2-week quarantine period preflight, there are SOME diseases where the incubation period is longer than that. In those cases, isolating the crew for 2 weeks wouldn't catch the problem.
Never ascribe to malice that which can adequately be explained by tenure.