The goal of the SOLSTICE project is to quantitatively summarize the data on the effects of actual or simulated microgravity and radiation exposure resulting from spaceflight on the cardiovascular system through an open citizen science approach.
Additionally, this program was designed to reach students and young people that are underrepresented in STEM, to include women, minorities, individuals of disadvantaged backgrounds, etc.
Initially, a group of investigators, through a collaboration with the Ames Life Science Data Archive (ALSDA) Analysis Working Group at NASA developed a list of relevant cardiovascular search terms. Based on these search terms, medical librarians generated and executed the search strategy in Medline, CINAHL, Embase and NASA repositories.
In parallel, students and young professionals from various space industry-affiliated organizations were invited to join this pilot project, resulting in the addition of ~100 individuals. These individuals completed a virtual training course on the nature and methodologies of the project and were then structured into teams with more senior individuals designated as team leaders.
Currently, the teams are screening approximately 15,000 studies using the systematic review tool, Covidence. Teams will be extracting and curating data for meta-analysis of the cardiovascular spaceflight literature, but also extracting, submitting, and curating appropriate datasets into the new Open Science Data Repository (OSDR). This effort will result in collaborative publications based upon the literature meta-analyses, and a number of publicly accessible datasets for reuse, modeling, machine learning, and knowledge graph-type approaches.
Hello everyone! We are currently in the process of extracting data from our literature search for heart rate and heart rate variability outcomes. We are hoping to gather some insights from any experts who are familiar with these topics, particularly heart rate variability as there are often many variables reported (time domain, frequency domain, etc.) and we would like to know what values we should focus on extracting to look at the heart rate variability of astronauts. Feel free to contact me with any info or to set up a meeting!
The rate of breathing is about twice lower in microgravity, mostly because the body does not have to exercise against gravity. The heart rate should also be two times lower like the breathing rate.
Not an expert, but curious what type of instruments were used to gather heart rate data. Is it mostly from wearables like watches? Or do some of the studies use more sophisticated equipment that record an ekg continuously. If enough of that data exists, it could be good to look at qt interval.
That is if V/Q is matched. Gott to remember that blood flow is higher to the lower lobes of the lung in 1G and there is much more area there for exchange. This would shift the V/Q ratio and may be a confounding factor, so if there is not exactly a change by 1/2 this may be an explanation. Additionally, gravity helps fluid on the serosal layer move down apply more of and adhesive (surface tension) force there helping to pre-expande the lungs. If that is gone then there is even less ventilation of the lower lung and may match reduction in perfusion (relative to 1G). Super complex question and I love it!
Hi, I have been a part of this type of crowdsourcing projects especially with ESA. We used Systematic Review Facility (SyRF) tool for screening and I managed to screen 3,132 articles from 10,019 articles under ESA guidelines. I have been through the process of these kind of projects and I would be happy to contribute in any way.
Not sure if you have received your answers yet but for clinical relevance I’d consider looking at the HR, and HRV markers such as RMSSD - used to measure parasympathetic (vagal activity)- so in Spaceflight if this number is reduced it could mean there’s increased stress and technically reduced parasympathetic activity. SDNN - more of a global measure - on earth the lower the number the more of an increased risk of heart failure and MI. LF which usually is interpreted in the context of baroreceptor sensitivity - so in spaceflight this might mean there are fluid balance or changes. HF - more parasympathetic activity, higher the number the more resilience to stress and cardio health, so for spaceflight it would show how the astronauts adapts to stress.
Clinically preflight, inflight, and post flight data should be monitored then you can see which astronauts are adapting better, also operationally useful for developing countermeasures. There is evidence that astronauts have experienced arrhythmias such as bigeminy, PAC, AV block, ventricular ectopics, so you can look at Qtc intervals too. With your data you could possibly see if certain astronauts had preceding changes to their arrhythmia.
Other considerations might be the activity they are doing including EVAs, exercise, etc.You could also clinically correlate some of the cardiac data variations in to OI and SANS
Hi Mattias
HRV is not really used clinically so would be interested to know what other variables you can consider. Arrhythmia researcher now working on rodent research so let me know if you still need help, (arrhythmias are not common in crew members and generally low risk according to NASA coverage)
Thanks,
Vandana
