Guest: Dr. William (Bill) Rowe. Topics: Vascular complications of human spaceflight, oxidative stress, related medical issues for long duration spaceflight. Please note that you are invited to comment, ask questions, and discuss the Space Show program/guest(s) on the Space Show blog, http://thespaceshow.wordpress.com. Comments, questions, and any discussion must be relevant and applicable to Space Show programming. I believe it is important that you follow this discussion with Dr. Rowe's website, www.femsinspace.com. You will also want to see his submarine model for oxidative stress so also visit www.femsinspace.com/Oxidative_stress.htm. Our two hour discussion was divided into four segments but since there were overriding themes and Dr. Rowe weaved his information back and forth with segment overlapping so this interview summary will look at the discussion as a whole, not segment by segment. We started our discussion with Dr. Rowe by asking him to describe the optimum candidate for going a humans to Mars mission. Dr. Rowe had much to say about who should be selected and why, both based on medical issues and gender. This is an important discussion and forms the basis for this Part One of a three part series with Dr. Rowe on this overall subject. Later in this initial discussion, Dr. Rowe introduced us to his submarine model which we referred to throughout the interview. Here, Dr. Rowe talked about various rat studies and in addition regarding space-related plasma levels, dust exposure issues, and malabsorption in space. Dr. Rowe also talked about pharmaceutical usage in space. As he began referring more and more to the submarine model , he talked about the periscope of the submarine being equal to cytokines and said that obese people have what amounts to a manufacturing plant for cytokines which signal and trigger oxidative stress. He explained oxidative stress, the involvement of free radicals and then introduced us to issues surrounding adrenaline and its relationship with magnesium in space. Dr. Rowe introduced us to ischemia/reperfusion and the oxygen demand in space. He talked about the need to breathe 100% oxygen before a space walk and the likely need to be able to duplicate 1 G in the spacecraft for the long duration spaceflight. As our discussion progressed, Dr. Rowe introduced us to the calcium magnesium relationship and what this means for spaceflight, especially magnesium. He also talked about insulin resistance, blood pressure, and more, including iron. If you have comments or questions for Dr. Rowe, please post them on The Space Show blog URL above. You can also email Dr. Rowe through his website or directly by using drrowe@femsinspace.com.
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The Space Show
