Here's How Space Travel Manipulate Immune Responses

Space travel might not be as exciting as it looks. New research revealed that space travel disturbs the human immune system and might create alterations in the immune response. The findings of the study were published in the journal Nature Scientific Reports . A previous study by Hughes-Fulford, the first female payload specialist to orbit Earth with her experiments in 1991, revealed significant findings of the aftermath of space travel faced by astronauts. She found that T lymphocytes produced weakened immune responses in the body of astronauts after space travel.

The concepts behind this research are the simulation of microgravity and single-cell analyses. Astronauts experience microgravity, the condition in which people appear to be weightless.

The team simulated microgravity in blood samples using a Rotating Wall Vessel, a cell culture vessel that produces the effects of microgravity on cells. A high-dimensional mass cytometry technique called single‑cell mass cytometry was used to observe cell-specific functional responses in 18 innate and adaptive immune cell subsets.

In general, T-regulatory cells keep an eye out on the immune responses and control them once a past infection becomes no longer threatening. However, Brice Gaudilliere, MD, Ph.D., co-PI, said, "There is a dampening of T lymphocyte immune activation responses, but also an exacerbation of immunosuppressive responses by T-regs."

The study also showed that natural killer cells were less active, whereas B lymphocytes remained unaffected under microgravity.

Jordan Spatz, another co-PI, concluded, "From space medical perspective, we see that microgravity does a lot of bad things to the human body, and we are hoping to gain the ability to mitigate some of the effects of microgravity during space travel."

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Source-Medindia