Joel Kontinen
It is good that we have the good old Earth as a shield against hazards to our immunology.
An article in Popular Science states:
“A new study published last month in Frontiers in Microbiology reports that herpes viruses lying dormant inside the body become reactivated in more than half of all astronauts sent into space, potentially exacerbating what is already a high-risk environment.”
These symptoms were no dreaded space illnesses but rather memories of what the astronauts suffer from down here:
The article went on to state:
“NASA scientists have been studying the effects of spaceflight on the immune system for over 20 years,” says Satish Mehta, a scientist at the agency’s Johnson Space Center and the senior author of the new study. “It is believed that stressful life situations cause the lowered immunity, which causes viral reactivating.” And there are obviously very few situations that induce more stress on the human body than living and working in space.
53 percent of astronauts who underwent space shuttle missions and 61 percent of astronauts who had gone on long stays on the ISS were shedding herpes viruses at much higher rates through their saliva and urine. The four herpes viruses detected include the three aforementioned types, in addition to the HSV type that causes oral and genital herpes.”
But then, it seems the foreign elements brought about illnesses.
Source:
Patel, Neel V 2019, Most of us have viruses sleeping inside us, and spaceflight wakes them up. Popular Science (22 March).
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