New potentialities for noninvasive optical investigation of microcirculation in extended space missions

摘要

Goals of the investigation were to analyze the spectrum of microcirculation parameters and collection of baseline data healthy subjects during extended isolation and relative hypokinesia as a model of mission to the International space station. There were investigated four healthy volunteers at the age of 37, 40, 41 and 48 during the baseline 240-d isolation period starting from July 3, 1999. With the regularity of 3 times a week each subject made records at the same time between 1 and 2 p.m. Optical computerized capillaroscope for noninvasive measurement of the capillary diameters, blood flow velocity as well as the size of the perivascular zone and the number of the blood aggregates was used. About 1500 episodes were recorded on laser disks and analyzed. Parameters of microcirculation were compared with other physiological parameters monitored in the experiment. All subjects had wave-like variations in the microcirculation parameters within the minute, week, and month ranges. Mean blood flow velocity in the baseline period was lower than in the period of isolation. Results of the daily body mass measurement were found to correlate with the perivascular zone size, that could be explain as retention of body fluids in tissues. Computerized capillaroscopy is easy to perform, noninvasive, highly sensitive and informative. It enables analysis of the character of rhythmic processes, adaptability of organism to long-term experiments and, therefore, can be proposed for use in extended space missions.