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?"

Comments

Re:Without a definite reason...

[cpghost]

How about putting them in a box?

Exactly. And if microgravity is a problem (I fail to see how it could be), put that box in a small centrifuge to create constant 1g.

Re:Without a definite reason...

[Joce640k]

That throbbing red circle you see on the TV adverts for pills actually becomes cone-shaped in space. This means the pill atoms are the wrong shape to be effective. Redesigning them would be prohibitively expensive even for NASA.

Plus, they're very hard to swallow in microgravity.

Re: I wonder if diseases are also affected?

[Jessified]

A: At least one is.

Salmonella in Space Get Even Nastier
http://www.space.com/6481-salmonella-space-nastier.html

Re:Treat Infection?

[Kurofuneparry]

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 ......