Abstract
Space travel is an extreme experience even for the astronaut who has received extensive basic training in various fields, from aeronautics to engineering, from medicine to physics and biology. Microgravity puts a strain on members of space crews, both physically and mentally: short-term or long-term travel in orbit the International Space Station may have serious repercussions on the human body, which may undergo physiological changes affecting almost all organs and systems, particularly at the muscular, cardiovascular and bone compartments. This review aims to highlight recent studies describing damages of human body induced by the space environment for microgravity, and radiation. All novel conditions, to ally unknown to the Darwinian selection strategies on Earth, to which we should add the psychological stress that astronauts suffer due to the inevitable forced cohabitation in claustrophobic environments, the deprivation from their affections and the need to adapt to a new lifestyle with molecular changes due to the confinement. In this context, significant nutritional deficiencies with consequent molecular mechanism changes in the cells that induce to the onset of physiological and cognitive impairment have been considered.
Highlights
The space environment induces cellular and molecular changes with consequents damages in different organs and tissues of astronauts
Due to the complexity of the space environment it is really difficult to distinguish damages induced by gravity, those induced by radiation and those caused by confinement
We explored the emerging insights into the system disorders in space environment highlighting nutritional deficiencies that might activate molecular mechanisms of damage
Summary
The space environment induces cellular and molecular changes with consequents damages in different organs and tissues of astronauts. Due to the complexity of the space environment it is really difficult to distinguish damages induced by gravity, those induced by radiation and those caused by confinement. Simulated microgravity experiments are really useful for discriminating the causes of damage. The effects of microgravity on humans, animals, plants, and objects in spacecrafts are evident at a macroscopic level, when they float freely within the cabin. A vast variety of effects invisible to the naked eye have been described at the cellular and molecular levels that induce disorders in different astronaut systems. During the first few hours of flight, it is quite common for the astronauts to experience multiple symptoms of the so-called Space Adaptation Syndrome, especially in the course of their first mission ever. The most common of those symptoms include nausea and vomiting, diarrhea, dizziness, headache, lethargy and general malaise, frequently culminating with the manifestation of a marked lack of appetite which may last for several days from the beginning of the mission (Kornilova and Kozlovskaya, 2003)
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