Page 12 - IAV Digital Magazine #471

iAV - Antelope Valley Digital Magazine
There's Something About Space That's Triggering Herpes in Astronauts
By Jon Christian, Futurism
Tests show that dormant herpes viruses reactivate in more than half the astronauts who travel on the Space Shuttle and International Space station, according to new NASA research - a phenomenon
the space agency says could pose problems for deep space mis- sions.
"During space- flight there is a rise in secretion of stress hor- mones like corti- sol and adrena- line, which are known to sup- press the
immune system, " said study author Satish Mehta, a researcher at Johnson Space Center, in a press release.
"In keeping with this, we find that astronaut's immune cells - particularly those that normally suppress and
eliminate viruses - become less effective during spaceflight and sometimes for up to 60 days after."
In research pub- lished last
month in the jour- nal Frontiers in Microbiology, Mehta and col- leagues found that astronauts
shed more her- pes viruses in their urine and saliva than before or after space travel. The cul- prit, they suspect, is just the stress of spaceflight.
"NASA astro- nauts endure weeks or even months exposed to microgravity and cosmic radia- tion - not to men- tion the extreme G forces of take- off and re-entry," Mehta said in the press release.
"This physical challenge is com- pounded by more familiar stressors like social sepa- ration, confine- ment and an altered sleep- wake cycle."
Fortunately, symptoms were relatively rare. Out of 89 astro- nauts the team
studied, only six experienced her- pes breakouts in space, according tothepaper-a rate of about seven percent.
The viral shed- ding also got worse the longer the astronauts were off Earth, leading researchers to worry the phe- nomenon could represent a chal- lenge for deep space travel.
"While only a small proportion develop symp- toms, virus reacti- vation rates increase with spaceflight dura- tion and could present a signifi- cant health risk on missions to Mars and beyond," reads the press release.
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