Better Bone Care Through Sweat Analysis?

When working in a microgravity environment, astronauts have to deal with several health effects that are not apparent on Earth. One of these effects is the body’s inability to replace bone minerals as fast as they are being lost, leaving them vulnerable to fractures and breaks. Current tests for bone mineral loss include blood tests, urine analysis and bone density scans, all of which are time-consuming and impractical when time is as budgeted as on a space mission.

Researchers at the University of Houston are working on a new way to test the loss of bone minerals. The idea is to use a small patch no bigger than an adhesive strip to take a sweat sample, make a biomarker analysis, and immediately give the results to the user.

The research will take place in three phases:

1. They must first see if sweat can be accurately used to gauge bone loss.

2. They must then find the most effective chemicals to measure bone minerals without harm to the user.

3. This phase would include human testing over a wide range of subjects, from young college students to elderly people to Air Force recruits. Testing would occur during normal daily activities and during monitored exercises conducted at the University of Houston’s Laboratory of Integrated Physiology.

If the UH team can successfully develop such a patch, it would allow astronauts to make on-the-fly adjustments to their diets and routines midflight. This would obviously assist in NASA’s efforts towards undertaking longer space missions to the Moon or to Mars. This patch also could conceivably have applications for those at osteoarthritic risk.

My interest in this subject comes from a residual interest in space flight from my childhood. I also find it intriguing that one could conceivably diagnose bone loss through examining sweat.

Source: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2008-10/uoh-sio100108.php

P.S. Sorry about the formatting, Blogger decided not to play nice and I can't try to figure out how to fix it.