Men and women have many differences. (There’s never been a more opportune time for a Mars/Venus reference.) But who knew one could be better suited to travel the galaxy than another? It’s not really that simple, there are nuances, but some new research does show that a gravity-free environment has unique affects for different sexes and genders.
NASA and the National Space Biomedical Research Institute (NSBRI) recently put together six work groups (made up of scientists and clinicians from academia, NASA or NSBRI, and other federal agencies) to look at previous research concerning how humans and animals respond to spaceflight. This was in response to a report from a National Academy of Sciences’ decadal survey in 2011, which really brought to life the idea that sex and gender could play a significant role in how physiological and biological affects take place in space.
The Journal of Women’s Health published the manuscripts showing the findings from the NASA and NSBRI hosted virtual workshop in its Nov. 2014 issue.
The “Impact of Sex and Gender on Adaptation to Space” is a compendium of the six individual manuscripts, an executive summary, and a commentary based on the findings from the work groups. As far as spaceflight goes, this is the most current and comprehensive report on sex and gender differences related to human physiology and psychology.
Some of the findings include:
- Women astronauts are more likely to endure Orthostatic Intolerance, meaning they are more likely to faint after standing.
- Women have greater loss of blood plasma volume than men during spaceflight, and women’s stress response characteristically includes a heart rate increase while men respond with an increase in vascular resistance.
- It has been reported that female subjects are more susceptible to radiation-induced cancer than their male counterparts; hence radiation permissible exposure levels are lower for women than men astronauts.
- Hearing sensitivity, when measured at several frequencies, declines with age much more rapidly in male astronauts than it does in female astronauts.
Get the full PDF of the findings here.
A Deep-dive Into Specialty Pharma
A specialty drug is a class of prescription medications used to treat complex, chronic or rare medical conditions. Although this classification was originally intended to define the treatment of rare, also termed “orphan” diseases, affecting fewer than 200,000 people in the US, more recently, specialty drugs have emerged as the cornerstone of treatment for chronic and complex diseases such as cancer, autoimmune conditions, diabetes, hepatitis C, and HIV/AIDS.
[Photo from flickr user Paul Hudson]
