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so a lot of studies are taking place on

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board the international space station

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looking at various changes that happen

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to the human body and one of the major

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concerns that we're looking at right now

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is actually vision changes in the

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astronauts that have been experienced

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and that we've been paying attention to

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i'm joined today by

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dr scott smith from the new nutritional

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biochemistry lab here at the johnson

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space center who just had a report

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published

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in the federation of american societies

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for experimental biology journal uh but

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he's actually looking at vision changes

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as well so uh doctor first off thank you

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so much for joining us tell us what give

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us some background real quick what are

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some of the changes or the effects to

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astronaut vision that we're looking at

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solving

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well

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thanks for the invitation and it's a

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pleasure to be here this morning um

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with regard to the vision changes

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in simple terms that i understand we see

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people going up with perfect vision

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that come home and need glasses okay um

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it's a little more complex than that

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when you do some detailed eye exams you

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see things like what they call disc

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edema you see changes in the shape of

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the eye or what they call globe

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flattening

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cotton wool spots a number of

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different things that the eye doctors

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find

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um they're a little more nuanced but

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again the bottom line is

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people that had what you would call

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perfect vision

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don't okay and so we've been talking a

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lot this week about fluid shifts it's an

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experiment for the one-year crew that's

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looking at um the potential that the

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fluid redistributing could be changing

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the vision and so tell me how does

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nutritional biochemistry come into the

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mix

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well that's that's a great question i

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get i said a lot my daughter asked me

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that this past weekend so you got a good

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answer

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i hope um first of all you need to

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realize that nutrition is more than just

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what you put in your mouth

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and that the study of nutrition involves

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not only things like carbohydrate and

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protein and vitamins and minerals

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but how those things work in the body

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and the biochemistry behind how your

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muscles make energy and how your brain

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utilizes glucose and how vitamins help

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with biochemical functions is all part

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of nutrition

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and

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that's that's how we got involved in

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this in this short story okay and so

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there's more to it than just the

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nutritional aspect in this paper and

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everything you guys are also looking at

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the genetics behind it tell me how that

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got into the mix as well

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well

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what happened was this was about five

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years ago now when there were a lot of

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folks trying to figure out

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what was going on with these with these

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vision issues

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and when we looked at our data what we

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found is

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differences in blood chemistry

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between astronauts that had vision

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issues and those that did not okay

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and we ruled out lots of things and

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one of the things that struck us was

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that we found

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that individuals that had these vision

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issues

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had these different blood chemistries

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before flight

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okay so it might be some kind of

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predisposed exactly at that point we

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started looking for

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reasons that there could be differences

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beforehand and the key thing that jumped

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up was the potential for genetics

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and we started looking at the genetics

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related to the chemicals that we were

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seeing in the blood that were different

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and that's what the

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that's what the paper we just published

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found

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is some key findings related to

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differences in genetics that explain

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uh those biochemical differences

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that we now need to try to go figure out

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what is it about those individuals

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that is leading them to have vision

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issues while others do not okay so

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obviously this is going to be an issue

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that could have a whole bunch of

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potential causes

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and so what's some of the work that you

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guys are going to be going ahead and

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doing to try and solve it on your end to

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solve what you were just talking about

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well the first thing we need to do is

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when we first looked at this we took a

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very small look at the genetics we

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looked at

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literally a handful of points in the dna

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where we thought there could be issues

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we knew at the time that there was a

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broader set to be looked at

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we looked at five of these genetic

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differences we should have looked at 300

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400

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but at the time we were a little

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reluctant to go in that deep

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um so we took a small stab and we got

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very lucky because

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two of those five came up as significant

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okay what we now want to do is go back

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and look at those three or four hundred

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points because

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while we did find significance with

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those two

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there's a lot of folks that had vision

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issues that didn't fit our model if you

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will

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and we're thinking that we may be able

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to get a better picture by looking at a

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broader set of the genetics so that's

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one of the first things we hope to do

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okay so i mean obviously a whole lot to

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be done still and this this is an issue

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that is stemming from something we

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noticed in space in astronauts but we

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always like to talk about and we always

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like to know are there any impacts that

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this kind of research could have to

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those of us living here on planet earth

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well indeed and and

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with regard to this one um

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one of the things that we found

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in review our data

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and in reviewing the literature the

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scientific literature what we found is

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that

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um there's a population out there with

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several characteristics that are very

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similar

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to astronauts with vision issues okay

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everything from the differences in

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chemistry blood chemistry that i talked

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about

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differences in intracranial pressure

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that

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everybody seems to think is related to

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this thing

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differences in carbohydrate metabolism

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differences in hormones differences in

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lots of things

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what we found is a clinical population

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that

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is very similar appears to be very

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similar to our astronauts

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and that population

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is women

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diagnosed with what's known as

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polycystic ovary syndrome or pcos

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and

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that is is something that we found that

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um again there's a lot of similarities

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one of the studies we've proposed is to

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look at that a little closer we've

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actually

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we're trying to work with folks up at

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the mayo clinic okay um they've got a

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study in women with pcos and what we're

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trying to do

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is a study to expand that

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and see if we can look at the

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differences that we found in astronauts

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and see if we can match that up and the

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potential implications in both

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directions that things we could learn

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from women with pcos about astronauts

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and vice versa things we could learn

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from the space program that might have

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implications for

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a significant you know it's estimated

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that 10 to 15

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of women have pcos oh wow so the the

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potential implications are huge all

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right well again dr scott smith from the

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nutritional biochemistry lab here at the

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johnson space center talking to us about

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vision changes doctor thanks so much for

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joining me today it's a fascinating

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paper it's a fascinating study and i'm