Many people engagingin medical scienceasked me,"You’ve beenworking on the exploration of Holistic Integrated Medicine（HIM）for quite awhile.What is the progressyou have made in your research?Have you got your article published?May I beyour first reader?"
Objective To study the impact of simulated weightlessness on cognitive function and neuronal degeneration in rats’ hippocampus, and to explore the mechanism of cognitive impairment induced by weightlessness. Methods Forty SD rats were randomly divided into control group（CON）, 4-week tail-suspension group（SUS）. The Morris water maze test was performed to assess the cognitive function of rats. Hematoxylin-eosin（HE） staining, Nissl staining, Fluoro-Jade B（FJB） staining and TUNEL staining were applied to observe the neuron morphology, degeneration and apoptosis in hippocampus. Tau, m TOR, P53, P21 and Sirt-1 protein expression were analyzed by western blot. Results Com-pared with the control, the 4-week tail-suspended rats exhibited cognitive dysfunction, which was manifested by the increase in swimming distance,protein expression swimming time and escape latency（P<0.01）. According to the HE staining and Nissl staining, neurons were shrunk and loosely ar-ranged with deeply stained nucleus in rats’ hippocampus after 4-week tail-suspension. Moreover, sim-ulated weightlessness led to neuronal degeneration as manifested by the increased FJB positive neurons（P<0.01）. And results of western blot showed that the protein expression of p-TauS404, p-TauS396, p-TauT231, p-m TOR, P53 and P21 in the hippocampus of SUS rats were increased significantly（P<0.05）. Besides, the expression of Sirt-1 was decreased in the SUS rats compared with the control（P<0.01）. TUNEL staining showed an increase in apoptotic neurons in hippocampus in the SUS group. Conclusion Our findings demonstrated that cognitive impairment induced by 4-week simulated weight-lessness may be attributable to neuronal degeneration in hippocampus.
Objective To measure the area of optic nerve subarachnoid and evaluate its sensitivity and specificity to predicting elevated intracranial pressure, so as to explore the mechanism of visual im-pairment and intracranial pressure in astronauts with this noninvasive method. Methods Based on the results of intracranial pressure measured by lumbar puncture, 51 subjects were divided into the elevat-ed intracranial pressure group and the normal intracranial pressure group. The general data were col-lected, and optic nerve sheath diameter(ONSD) at 3 mm behind the ball and area of optic nerve sub-arachnoid space(ONSASA) between 3～7 mm behind the ball were measured by ultrasonic examina-tion and Image J 1.51 analysis software. The prediction ability of these two indexes for elevated in-tracranial pressure was compared by receiver operating characteristic curve and area under curve. Results The optic nerve sheath diameter and the area of optic nerve subarachnoid were larger in the ele-vated intracranial pressure group, and the difference between the two groups was statistically signifi-cant. The area under curve of the area of optic nerve subarachnoid(0.894) to predict elevated in-tracranial pressure was larger than the optic nerve sheath diameter(0.764). Conclusion The measure-ment of area of optic nerve subarachnoid by ultrasonography can predict elevated intracranial pressure, which provides a possible and effective method to study the mechanism of visual impairment and in-tracranial pressure in space environment.
Physical-chemical technology is used in the environmental control and life support systems(ECLSS) of the International Space Station(ISS) to realize the water recycling.During the process, part of the water will enter into the urine brine produced by urine distillation and thus cannot be recy-cled.Techniques that are capable of extracting water from urine brine would enhance the level of total water recovery, and therefore lower the frequency and cost of supply from the earth.The urine brine processing techniques focusing on water recovery was comprehensively reviewed in this paper.The characteristics of 8 technologies from 3 categories including the direct drying technology, the indirect drying technology and the separation drying technology were compared.Then the technology selection of water recovery from urine brine was proposed.In addition, the key points and difficulties in the re-search of water recovery technology was pointed out which may serve as a reference for future researches.
Redox signal is an important regulator of intracellular homeostasis and many biological processes are capable to response to it.Studies have demonstrated that redox oscillates in the body and its period is consistent with that of the clock genes.With the deepening of the researches,large amount of evidence indicates that the transcriptional/translational feedback loops mechanism of circadian rhythm and the non-transcriptional oscillatory mechanism of redox are mutually regulated.The two mechanisms therefore are coupled to produce a timing system with high flexibility.Long-term exposure to microgravity can cause circadian rhythm disorders and oxidative stress damages to the body,increase the health risks of astronauts,and lead to a decline in mission performance and alertness.At present,the effect of microgravity environment on oxidative stress has been studied in depth,but the effect of microgravity on the molecular mechanism of circadian rhythm is rarely studied,and the molecular mechanism of interaction between them has not been fully elucidated.In this paper,the transcriptional oscillation of clock genes and non-transcriptional oscillation of redox were reviewed,the regulation relationship between them and the influence of microgravity on them were summarized.It may serve as a good reference for further deepening the research of space biology and formulating the comprehensive countermeasures of space medicine.
