This discovery made by a team of NASA scientists is apparently due to the long periods of microgravity to which astronauts traveling into space are subjected. This change in the anatomy of the heart could lead to cosmonauts suffering from heart problems .
The study, which was conducted on 12 astronauts to test the heart health implications of a future manned mission to Mars, suggests that space flights for long periods of time can negatively affect astronauts’ health.
The scientists took pictures of the participating astronauts’ hearts using ultrasound machines installed on the International Space Station (ISS), which provided data on the shape of the heart before, during and after the space flight . The results showed that the heart in space becomes 9.4% more spherical , just as the researchers had predicted with sophisticated mathematical models developed for the project.
The validation of these results, which will be presented at the 63rd Annual Scientific Session of the American College of Cardiology, in Washington (USA) indicate, in any case, that the more spherical shape of the astronauts’ hearts seems to be temporary , since when they return on Earth the heart returns to its normal elongated state.
“That can have serious consequences when returning to Earth, so we are investigating whether steps can be taken to prevent or counteract that loss,” says James Thomas, president of Cardiovascular Imaging and lead scientist in Ultrasound at NASA.
