Can we really reach moon or mars? 
Space station experiment shows evidence that immune systems are not functioning without gravity.
Memory of T cells or white blood cells activation outside earth gravity stops working.
In April 2010, personnel aboard the International Space Station plan to carry out an experiment designed by a San Francisco VA Medical Center researcher that will investigate why the immune system’s T cells stop working in the absence of gravity. The experiment has implications for understanding the body’s ability to mount an immune response on earth, as well.
On earth, T cells - white blood cells that are essential for proper immune function - stop functioning in people with untreated HIV/AIDS, as well as in some elderly people, leading to the development of potentially fatal opportunistic infections.
The experiment aboard the ISS is meant to shed light on the genetic mechanisms behind T cell shutdown, according to principal investigator Millie Hughes-Fulford, PhD, director of the Laboratory for Cell Growth at SFVAMC and an astronaut who flew aboard the space shuttle in 1991.
“From the beginning of the U.S. Apollo moon program, we’ve known that about half of our astronauts develop suppressed immune systems, either during flight or shortly afterwards, and we have since learned that non-functioning T cells are at least partly responsible,” says Hughes-Fulford, who is also a professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco.
“If we can get to the root cause, we can potentially help older people, people with HIV/AIDS, and anyone else who is immunocompromised here on earth,” she says. “We will also overcome a serious obstacle to long-term space exploration. A runaway infection among the crew due to compromised immune systems would mean disaster for a multi-year Mars mission, for example.”
More...
http://www.physorg.com/news189367966.html
Space station experiment shows evidence that immune systems are not functioning without gravity.
Memory of T cells or white blood cells activation outside earth gravity stops working.
In April 2010, personnel aboard the International Space Station plan to carry out an experiment designed by a San Francisco VA Medical Center researcher that will investigate why the immune system’s T cells stop working in the absence of gravity. The experiment has implications for understanding the body’s ability to mount an immune response on earth, as well.
On earth, T cells - white blood cells that are essential for proper immune function - stop functioning in people with untreated HIV/AIDS, as well as in some elderly people, leading to the development of potentially fatal opportunistic infections.
The experiment aboard the ISS is meant to shed light on the genetic mechanisms behind T cell shutdown, according to principal investigator Millie Hughes-Fulford, PhD, director of the Laboratory for Cell Growth at SFVAMC and an astronaut who flew aboard the space shuttle in 1991.
“From the beginning of the U.S. Apollo moon program, we’ve known that about half of our astronauts develop suppressed immune systems, either during flight or shortly afterwards, and we have since learned that non-functioning T cells are at least partly responsible,” says Hughes-Fulford, who is also a professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco.
“If we can get to the root cause, we can potentially help older people, people with HIV/AIDS, and anyone else who is immunocompromised here on earth,” she says. “We will also overcome a serious obstacle to long-term space exploration. A runaway infection among the crew due to compromised immune systems would mean disaster for a multi-year Mars mission, for example.”
More...
http://www.physorg.com/news189367966.html
