Shrimp, soldiers, and outer-space: it sounds like an unlikely combination, but it could soon improve the health of astronauts and cosmonauts.
Injuries and infections that occur in space take much longer to heal than those that happen on the ground. This is due to the micro-gravity aboard shuttles and space stations affecting the way our cells grow. Human immune cells don’t work to their full potential in low gravity, while bacteria grow rapidly. This leads to an increase in infections, which take longer to heal.
Arthropods, which include shrimp and insects, are protected from infection by micro-organisms by their exoskeletons—their outer shell. Arthropods don’t have immune systems like we do, so this attribute of their shells is really important. Their shells are made up of chitin – a substance similar to finger nails - , and it is a dissolvable form of chitin, chitosan, that scientists hope to treat wounds in space with.
The US Army is already using bandages soaked in chitosan to treat wounds on soldiers in iraq. They have found that chitosan speeds up blood clotting, so wounds scab over faster, and there is less inflammation, so you don’t get nasty scars.
Chitosan has a positive charge, and it is believed that it attracts the negatively charged outer layers of bacteria, stopping the bacteria from entering wounds.
A company called BioSTAR West are trialling chitosan on the space shuttle Endeavour this month. Samples containing human immune cells, bacteria and chitosan will join the astronauts on their voyage, and the scientists involved will compare these results to similar experiments completed on the ground.
Who knows, maybe space suits in the future will be made from prawns?!
For more on this story, check out New Scientist:
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