Astronaut Back Pain
Whether you’re heading to the gym or thinking of hopping a future flight to Mars, results from a recent study offer unexpected insights regarding the role of soft tissue as a cause of back pain.
The work, “From the international space station to the clinic: how prolonged unloading may disrupt lumbar spine stability,” was named the 2017 Outstanding Paper Award Winner: Medical/Interventional Medicine by the Spine Journal. The research was published in the journal’s January 2018 edition.
Jeffrey C. Lotz, Ph.D., co-author on the work, and David S. Bradford, M.D., Endowed Chair in Orthopaedic Surgery at the Department of Orthopaedic Surgery at the University of California, San Francisco, told OTW, “Our academic research program has historically focused on back pain mechanisms and therapies for terrestrial populations—i.e., patients.”
“When we learned that astronauts have a high incidence of back pain in space, and disc herniation after returning to gravity, we were intrigued and interested in applying our knowledge to help NASA develop countermeasures for long duration space flight.”
“Because we would be studying how the human spine responds to a significant environmental exposure, microgravity, our expectation was that new knowledge coming from this research would benefit both NASA crew and the general population. Plus, it’s exciting to be part of a team of researchers that are helping NASA solve a significant health risk that may have important implications for future manned missions to Mars.”
“This is the first longitudinal imaging and functional study of humans before and after long-duration space travel. Because access to astronauts is so limited, there was a long process of study design administrative review and approval, particularly regarding radiation exposure (e.g. X-rays) and time requirements during the critical days immediately after return to Earth.”
“We intended to capture microgravity effects before crew re-acclimate to gravity, so getting scans and tests completed first, before other post-flight studies was crucial. This involved significant coordination with scores of other scientists that had studies approved for other health-related questions, such as vision impairment, body fluid shifts, and cardiovascular changes.”
“We also needed to get astronauts to volunteer to be subjects for our studies. This is because there are more science studies approved than there is time available by the crew, particularly within the first week after flight.”
