title: Keeping nanobacterial infections at bay during space travel.
abstract: In January 2004, President George W. Bush unveiled plans to send astronauts to the Moon in 2015 and shortly thereafter to Mars. With the prospect of manned exploration of the planets drawing ever closer, the new discipline of Space Medicine is destined to come to the fore. Moreover, investigations of how human beings function under space conditions could provide important new insights into fundamental questions of human physiology and disease. We draw attention here to one such instance of a disease process that can be provoked by extended periods of exposure to low gravity.
authors.affiliation: Central Institute of Biomedical Engineering, University of Ulm, 89081 Ulm, Germany. samoan@gmx.net
authors.forename: Andrei P
authors.initials: AP
authors.lastname: Sommer
authors.forename: N Chandra
authors.initials: NC
authors.lastname: Wickramasinghe
mesh_terms: D000337:Aerospace Medicine / Q000639:trends*; D001424:Bacterial Infections / Q000188:drug therapy / Q000382:microbiology; D018559:Exobiology; D006801:Humans; D013026:Space Flight / Q000295:instrumentation / Q000639:trends*