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A new study shows that astronauts from the Apollo missions have a rate of cardiovascular disease mortality nearly five times that of other astronauts, suggesting that even short missions outside Earth’s protective geomagnetic field have long-term health consequences. Researchers compared cause of death for seven Apollo astronauts to that of 35 astronauts who had flown in low Earth orbit, and 35 who had never flown orbital missions. Published in Nature, the study may have implications for future efforts to send humans into deep space. The authors also conducted experiments with mice to learn more about how weightlessness and deep space radiation affect the cardiovascular system. We speak with lead author Michael Delp.
ResearchGate: What were the results of your assessment of cardiovascular disease in these astronauts?
Michael Delp: The work is a study of mortality rate, so we looked at the causes of death in each of three groups: Apollo astronauts, low Earth orbit astronauts, and non-flight astronauts. The Apollo lunar astronauts are the only humans to have traveled into deep space, beyond the protective magnetosphere surrounding the Earth. We found that death due to cardiovascular disease was higher in the Apollo astronauts than the other groups.
RG: Studying the health of astronauts inherently involves a very small sample size. How should this factor into the interpretation of your results?
Delp: The small sample size is a limitation of the study. One has to use caution in drawing definitive conclusions. Despite this limitation, we thought it was important to publish these results because it is also difficult to ignore the possibility that deep space travel, including deep space radiation, may be having a much more adverse effect on cardiovascular health than previously estimated. With countries and companies like SpaceX stating planning to send humans back into deep space as early as ten years from now, there is not a lot of time to experimentally address the possible implications of these results with Apollo astronauts and answer the many outstanding questions surrounding space radiation effects on the cardiovascular system. For example, it over a year just to complete the experiments in the one mouse study we conducted for this paper. And Brookhaven National Laboratory is the only place in the US where deep space radiation exposures can be simulated.
Read more here. (Research Gate)
ResearchGate: What were the results of your assessment of cardiovascular disease in these astronauts?
Michael Delp: The work is a study of mortality rate, so we looked at the causes of death in each of three groups: Apollo astronauts, low Earth orbit astronauts, and non-flight astronauts. The Apollo lunar astronauts are the only humans to have traveled into deep space, beyond the protective magnetosphere surrounding the Earth. We found that death due to cardiovascular disease was higher in the Apollo astronauts than the other groups.
RG: Studying the health of astronauts inherently involves a very small sample size. How should this factor into the interpretation of your results?
Delp: The small sample size is a limitation of the study. One has to use caution in drawing definitive conclusions. Despite this limitation, we thought it was important to publish these results because it is also difficult to ignore the possibility that deep space travel, including deep space radiation, may be having a much more adverse effect on cardiovascular health than previously estimated. With countries and companies like SpaceX stating planning to send humans back into deep space as early as ten years from now, there is not a lot of time to experimentally address the possible implications of these results with Apollo astronauts and answer the many outstanding questions surrounding space radiation effects on the cardiovascular system. For example, it over a year just to complete the experiments in the one mouse study we conducted for this paper. And Brookhaven National Laboratory is the only place in the US where deep space radiation exposures can be simulated.
Read more here. (Research Gate)
