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Study: Astronauts Who Reach Deep Space 'Far More Likely To Die From Heart Disease' (independent.co.uk)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Independent: Astronauts who venture into deep space appear to be much more likely to die from heart disease, according to a new study. In another sign that leaving planet Earth is fraught with danger and a potential blow to hopes of establishing a colony on Mars, researchers discovered deep space radiation appears to damage the body's cardiovascular system. They reported that three out of the seven dead Apollo astronauts died as a result of a cardiovascular disease, such as a heart attack or stroke. Although the numbers are small, that rate of 43 percent is four to five times higher than found among astronauts who flew in low Earth orbit or who did not actually go into space, according to a paper in the journal Scientific Reports. In an attempt to test whether the higher numbers of cardiovascular deaths were simply a statistical blip or a genuine sign of the effect of traveling into deep space, the scientists exposed mice to the same type of radiation that the astronauts would have experienced. After six months, which is the equivalent of 20 human years, the mice showed damage to arteries that is known to lead to the development of cardiovascular disease in humans.
I don't see why this would be a surprise but at the statistical rigor level we're talking about dozens of people being used for heart studies. Even with NASA's predilection for perfection there's no way to isolate deep space causal to heart disease or much else with as few individuals as we're ever measuring from.
Total BS:
Sample size of 7
Did anybody bother to control for the prevalence of smoking and other environmental factors that may not be in play for most individuals 50 years later?
Mission Control looked like a nicotine hotbox half the time back then, and astronauts rotated through as CAPCOM. And that's not even starting to consider what else they may have been deliberately or accidentally exposed to during the early space program.
"Although the numbers are small, that rate of 43 percent is four to five times higher". The number being this small means the results are not in any ways even near being statistically significant, and the conclusion is there is no conclusion to be made except someone needs to refresh their knowledge of the binomial distribution. It is not a scientific result if you cannot make a scientific argument to back it up. In other news, in 100% of known spacefaring species, the first individual of that species to reach orbit does not die from heart disease.
Indeed, the sample size is small, but how are they supposed to get a larger sample? They did the logical followup, which is a mouse study that confirmed the (limited) human results.
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Perhaps astronauts who go into deep space are feted and find themselves traveling more, eating out more, being in more smoke filled environments, stressing out in front of large audiences etc. A few days in space might not be what did it but everything that came after. Or maybe it's just a statistical blip from a small sample size.
Yes, but stress also causes heart problems.
I suspect deep space missions typically causes more stress than low orbit missions but that is just speculative, just like most of this discussion.
Indeed, the sample size is small, but how are they supposed to get a larger sample?
You don't. You just admit that the sample is to small to draw meaningful conclusions. The error bars here have to be enormous.
They did the logical followup, which is a mouse study that confirmed the (limited) human results.
Mice aren't humans last I checked and while mouse models are very useful you are limited in how far you can extrapolate the findings to humans. Basically this finding is something that should make scientists go "huh, that's curious - we should follow up on this once we have more data".
Just pointing out that life expectancy at age 40, which is when these astronauts flew, is 79.9 years.