Maltese researchers in a study on the blood of astronauts
A team of Maltese researchers will be participating in a study on the blood of astronauts with the aim of better understanding the space anemia phenomenon and how that knowledge can be used to better treat the patients of the anemia here in the world.
Researchers from the University of Malta, led by Joseph Borg, professor of biomedical science, in collaboration with the Ottawa Hospital Research Institute (OHRI), will investigate blood samples from the crew members of the Polaris Dawn mission, which will be launched from NASA’s Kennedy Space. Center in Florida next March.
Space travel is known to take a physical toll on the human body and, in fact, all astronauts return to earth suffering from anemia – a condition of the human body when there is not enough healthy red cells in circulation.
Red blood cells are responsible for providing oxygen to body tissue.
Recent studies written by Guy Trudel, from OHRI, who is leading the full investigation, found that the death of red blood cells increased during space flight and microgravity.
Research has found that while on earth human bodies create and destroy approximately two million red blood cells per second, astronauts in space experienced a loss of three million red blood cells destroyed per second, resulting in in a 54 percent greater cell loss than that experienced by people on earth.
Borg said: “Space anemia is still not well understood. There are obvious triggers, such as stress on the human body during space flight and microgravity, that contribute to hemolysis of red blood cells.
“They are destroyed within the vascular system instead of being cleared in the spleen. However, when astronauts fly back to earth, they remain persistently anemic for more than six months, indicating that other factors must be involved.”
The Maltese research team, Borg explained, will be looking at the anemia model to see how the globin genes are disturbed as well as how the hemoglobin of adults is affected and returns to normal. fetal hemoglobin.
“The lessons we learn, the knowledge we gain and the results obtained will lead us closer to a cure for beta-type hemoglobinopathies such as thalassemia and sickle cell disease,” he said.
Borg said the researchers will be working with astronauts from the Polaris program, a commercial planned human spaceflight company.
“My team will look at lysed red blood cells from human astronauts before they go into space, on blood obtained during that high earth orbit in space and on their return back to earth afterwards five days,” said Borg.
“The lysed blood is analyzed for hemoglobin fractions which we have already been doing on the Maltese population for the last ten years and more. We have evidence that blood in space favors a more primitive/earlier form of red cell production and hemoglobin synthesis (called fetal hemoglobin) as opposed to adult hemoglobin.”
This is not Borg’s first foray into space.
Last year, he led a team of researchers who sent Malta’s first science experiment, the Maleth Project, into space.
The research sent tissue samples of diabetic foot ulcers to study the effects of microgravity on them. A second set of samples, called Maleth II, was sent into space last July.
The project hopes to improve precision-based medicine to treat diabetic foot ulcers, which, if left untreated, can lead to amputations.
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