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Space Bone Loss

Researchers suspect the root cause of bone loss in space is weightlessness.

In fact, the pull of gravity 350 km above our planet's surface -- where the space station and the shuttle orbit -- is 90 percent as strong as it is on the ground. That hardly sounds weightless! But orbiting astronauts nevertheless feel weightless because they and their spacecraft are freely falling together toward Earth. (The space station doesn't come crashing to the ground because it's going forward so fast, about 28,000 km/h, that its fall matches the curvature of the Earth. It literally "falls around" the planet.) Just as gravity seems briefly suspended in a downward-accelerating elevator, so does the crew infreely-falling space station experience "zero-G."

In this mutual free-fall, bones no longer have to provide support for locomotion or even for maintaining body posture. As a result, little or no stress (i.e., mechanical strain) is applied to the skeletal system. Scientists think the lack of stress on the bones may be responsible for the progressive bone loss seen in long-term residents of space. (Lack of stress on bones among sedentary Earthlings, such as those confined to beds due to illness or old age, also contributes to osteoporosis.)

People often think of bones as rigid, unchanging calcium pillars. But bones are actually dynamic living tissues that constantly reshape themselves in response to the stresses placed on them. (This is how archaeologists can tell whether skeletal remains belonged to a laborer or an aristocrat, for example. The incessant pull of a laborer's muscles causes the bones to reshape themselves slightly where the muscles were attached.)People often think of bones as rigid, unchanging calcium pillars. But bones are actually dynamic living tissues that constantly reshape themselves in response to the stresses placed on them. (This is how archaeologists can tell whether skeletal remains belonged to a laborer or an aristocrat, for example. The incessant pull of a laborer's muscles causes the bones to reshape themselves slightly where the muscles were attached.)

This reshaping is performed by two types of bone cell that are constantly depositing and extracting calcium phosphate minerals from the structural matrix of the bone. The actions of these two cell types -- "osteoblasts," which deposit calcium phosphate, and "osteoclasts," which remove it -- usually balance each other out. When the body has a calcium deficiency or during pathological osteoporosis, the removal of the structural calcium phosphate crystals outpaces replacement, leading to a weakening of the bone.

In prolonged weightlessness, bone mass appears to decrease because the lack of stress on the bones slows the formation of osteoblast cells. Fewer bone-building cells, along with a constant level of bone-destroying activity, translates into a net loss of bone mass. Why weightlessness should inhibit the development of osteoblasts is the subject of a current study at Vanderbilt University. A key chemical in the development of osteoblast cells from precursor cells is an enzyme called "creatine kinase-B." Investigators are trying to figure out which molecules in the body regulate the activity of this enzyme and how those chemicals are affected by low gravity, in the hope that this knowledge will point to a way to boost osteoblast formation in space.

The main weight-bearing bones of the body -- indicated with light-purple shading in this drawing -- are also the ones most affected by space-induced bone loss.

NASA research has already led to the development of a fast and inexpensive tool to measure the extent of osteoporosis by analyzing the stiffness of bones. It takes measurements without exposing the patient to radiation.

Another study at the Medical College of Georgia is investigating a possible connection between eating and bone destruction. Ingestion of food causes levels of a certain hormone -- called "glucose-dependent insulinotropic peptide" -- to increase in the bloodstream. The main function of this hormone is to stimulate the production of insulin after a meal, which in turn triggers cells to absorb energy-providing glucose from the blood.

Bone cells are sensitive to this hormone, too. Researchers have found that when this hormone attaches to "receptor" molecules on bone cells, osteoclast (bone destroying) activity goes down and osteoblast (bone creating) activity goes up.

Could hormones like this one be given to space travelers as a supplement to prevent bone degradation? Scientists don't yet know.

Genetic make-up might also play a role, as suggested by the variation of bone loss observed between individual astronauts and cosmonauts.

"The 1 to 2 percent per month loss is an estimate of bone loss -- an average value," Shapiro says. "Certain individuals on six month flights have lost as much as 20 percent of bone mass in their lower extremities, while a few have lost none during the same period in space."

"Bone loss of this magnitude leads to a significant increase in fracture rate, which may be as much as five-fold that expected with normal bone mass on Earth," he added. "A limb fracture involving, say, one of a six-person space crew could seriously compromise a mission's objectives."

Indeed, adds Shapiro, "the problem of bone loss must be overcome before people are placed in the position of performing physically hazardous tasks [after a long voyage in zero-G]." Future astronauts who visit Mars, for instance, will need strong healthy bones when they step out of their spaceship and onto the Red Planet.

Humans won't be striding across Mars for some time, but bone loss is hardly a far-off concern. Right here on our own planet millions suffer from osteoporosis -- a malady that strikes ordinary people and far-out explorers alike. Solving the problem in space, say researchers, will likely bring welcome relief back home to Earth.

Could hormones like this one be given to space travelers as a supplement to prevent bone degradation? Scientists don't yet know. Genetic make-up might also play a role, as suggested by the variation of bone loss observed between individual astronauts and cosmonauts.