Summary of 165 signs of ageing at cellular level
Muscle weakening, bone density loss and an impaired immune system: the systemic health impacts of spaceflight bear many similarities to ageing. Sharon van Rijthoven, a student from Delft University of Technology, compared the effects of ageing and altered gravity from a cellular perspective in her internship at the European Space Agency.
Sharon’s study, recently published in the FASEB Journal, compares 165 signs of ageing at the cellular level with research on the cellular effects of altered gravity. Because microgravity causes similar systemic symptoms as ageing, Sharon expected to find that the cellular signs of ageing were similar to those of real or simulated microgravity but opposite to those of hypergravity.
This pie chart is a summary of all 165 signs of ageing at the cellular level investigated in the study, showing the overall relationship between the effects of biological ageing and altered gravity.
[Image description: the image shows a pie chart with dark green, red, orange, yellow and grey sections. This pie chart is a summary of all 165 signs of ageing at the cellular level investigated in Sharon van Rijthoven's study, showing the overall relationship between the effects of biological ageing and altered gravity. For 29% of the signs, there are similar effects between ageing and microgravity and opposite between ageing and hypergravity. 15% of the signs show opposite effects between ageing and microgravity and similar between ageing and hypergravity. 17% show ambiguous effects in altered gravity. 6% show changes during ageing but are not affected by altered gravity. The remaining 33% of signs of ageing were not investigated in altered gravity.]
