Scientists at Johns Hopkins Medicine sent human heart tissue into space to study the effects of low gravity on cardiac health at a cellular level.
Professor Deok-Ho Kim led the team that engineered heart tissue from human stem cells. The tissues were placed on small chips designed to mimic the environment of a human heart and sent to the International Space Station (ISS) for 30 days of monitoring.
The heart tissues in space suffered a significant decline in their ability to contract and developed irregular heartbeats.
These changes were starkly different from those in the tissues kept on Earth. And this is not it: the tissues showed molecular and genetic changes similar to those seen in aging.
Unless this can be mitigated, this could be the death knell for long duration deep space travel.
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