Infection Prevention During Space Travel
One of the highlights of any conference is chatting with other investigators and hearing about all the creative projects they've been working on. A perfect example occurred last week in Potsdam when Len Mermel described his multi-year effort to understand infection risks that might arise during prolonged human space travel. Why is this important? Even a short roundtrip to our neighbor Mars might take 400-450 days given that the Mars Curiosity Rover took 254 days to reach the planet's surface. After he described his findings, I was increasingly excited to read the review, and fortunately, I didn't have to wait long, since the pre-print just appeared in CID.
First of all, this is a very well written paper and was a lot of fun to read. He highlights evidence that suggests that microgravity might enhance expression of virulence factors and increase biofilm formation. On the human side, there is evidence that the immune system becomes increasingly dysregulated, which could increase the risk of infections from pathogens such as herpesviruses, and that anaerobic flora in the gut is decreased, which could increase the risk of aerobic pathogens such as Pseudomonas. There is also evidence of enhanced S. aureus skin colonization and Enterobacteriaceae in the upper airways. If that isn't scary enough, microbes have been shown to "survive in free-floating condensate" kinda like what happens in Cleveland or Detroit.
The rest of the paper describes the infection prevention challenges facing the astronauts, what microbial changes to expect and specific issues related to the confines of the spacecraft or habitat. He then thinks ahead by suggesting potential countermeasures that could be implemented using existing vaccines, decolonization therapies and spacecraft modifications designed to minimize risks of transmission. Finally, he lists several important unanswered questions to guide future research.
Excellent work Len!
Image Source: Les Bossinas of NASA Lewis Research Center
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