The long permanence in the space alters vision of 75% of astronauts – The Press

The vision of the almost three-quarters of astronauts who stay for long time in space is altered by changes in the pressure of the cerebrospinal fluid as a result of microgravity, determined scientists whose study was released Monday.

During the last decade, while a growing number of teams spend months on the International Space Station (ISS), the physicians of the Nasa began to notice vision problems among the astronauts who stay for long periods in orbit.

Your vision was blurry and more in depth studies showed structural changes, including the flattening of the eyeball and swelling of the extremity of the optic nerves.

This syndrome, called “vision Disorder that results from the variation of the intracranial pressure”, was the subject of a presentation at the annual conference of the American Society of Radiology (RSNA) that takes place this week in Chicago.

Initially, the scientists thought that vision problems were the result of the way in which the blood circulates in the body in microgravity conditions, focusing especially on the head, explains Noam Alperin, professor of radiology and biomedical engineering at the Faculty of Medicine University of Miami (Florida), the lead author.

For this study, we compared the ct scans of the brain of seven astronauts who had spent several months in the ISS with those of nine of their colleagues who had made only short trips.

Found that the first had a greater amount of cerebrospinal fluid in the brain. This fluid protects the brain and spinal cord, transports nutrients and eliminates toxins.

On the ground, the fluid allows the adaptation of the body to different positions, standing, sitting or lying down. But without gravity this hydraulic mechanism is “disturbed by the lack of pressure changes in accordance with the different positions of the body,” says dr. Alperin, noting that it is the first time established a direct quantitative relationship between the fluid pressure and vision problems.

Nasa conducts research to find a cure for this eye problem for the manned missions of long duration in space, including sending astronauts to Mars by 2030.