University of Ottawa

Published purpose

This projects aims to identify blood indicators for deconditioning (a state of extreme weakness) from available blood samples. Astronauts experience deconditioning when travelling between gravity environments. Similarly, bedridden patients may develop deconditioning requiring rehabilitation treatment in the hospital. The effect of microgravity on physiological systems is unclear and there is a lack of tools for early detection of deconditioning and for testing countermeasures designed at mitigating the negative effects on health. Early detection of deconditioning in microgravity through a blood molecular signature enables the early assessment of immune functions and the prevention of infection with available medication. Our previous scientific participation in bedrest studies, an on-Earth model of microgravity, and collected blood samples from participants, provides an opportunity to complement our ongoing gene expression analyses with measures of proteins. This research project provides students with biological samples to identify biomarkers of deconditioning and to isolate the biological effects of bedrest. Findings can be applied for the early detection of deconditioning in bedridden patients from a blood sample.