• Email Us: [email protected]
  • Contact Us: +1 718 874 1545
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Medical Market Report

  • Home
  • All Reports
  • About Us
  • Contact Us

Astronauts Heading To Mars Might Have A Drug Problem On Their Hands

July 25, 2024 by Deborah Bloomfield

The first astronauts heading to Mars will venture further than any human before them, and should any of them encounter medical problems on their journey – perhaps “cosmic kidney disease” or a bacterial infection – they will be almost entirely alone to deal with them. Adding to those challenges, a new study has identified another problem; medications brought along on the mission will expire before the astronauts return to Earth. 

Advertisement

On the International Space Station (ISS), astronauts have access to a variety of medications that can be replenished by resupply missions if depleted or expired. However, a trip to Mars will take around nine months each way, with an extra three months spent on the Red Planet waiting for Earth and Mars to be in a suitable position for the return journey. That’s 21 months in total, with no new supplies.

NASA does not routinely disclose medication used on the ISS, but the new study’s authors used a Freedom of Information Act Request to obtain a list, assuming that a Mars-bound mission would have a similar stock. The researchers, from the Duke University School of Medicine, then assessed how long each drug would be expected to last in its original packaging. This too raises a problem, as shelf-lives are based on the drugs being kept in their original packaging, but drugs sent to the ISS are repackaged before launch.

On top of that, we don’t know how long these drugs last in space. It’s possible that they will degrade more quickly due to radiation.

The good news is that the shortest shelf life (for an ophthalmic lubricant) is 18 months, posing a “minimal risk” for extended missions to the Moon – but for longer missions, astronauts could see their drugs become less effective.

“Using the maximum labeled shelf-life across all sources for each medication, we found that 14 medications will expire by 24 months: one ophthalmic lubricant, one advanced life support medication, one anaphylaxis treatment medication, one benzodiazepine, one antiangina medication, two corticosteroids, one local anesthetic, one topical urinary jelly, two antibiotics, one antipsychotic, one inhaler, and one ear wax removal medication,” the team writes in their study. “Furthermore, over half […] of the entire 2023 ISS formulary will expire by 36 months.”

Advertisement

Using more conservative estimates of efficacy based on each medication’s minimum labeled shelf-life, 97.8 percent of medications taken aboard the ISS expire within 36 months.

Drug manufacturers assure the effectiveness of their medication up to the expiration date, but beyond that, they may become less effective. 

“It doesn’t necessarily mean the medicines won’t work, but in the same way you shouldn’t take expired medications you have lying around at home, space exploration agencies will need to plan on expired medications being less effective,” Daniel Buckland, assistant professor in the Department of Emergency Medicine at the Duke University School of Medicine and aerospace medicine researcher said in a statement.

“Ultimately, those responsible for the health of spaceflight crews will have to find ways to extend the expiration of medications to the complete mission duration,” the team concluded, “or accept the elevated risk associated with administration of an expired medication.”

Advertisement

The study is published in the journal npj Microgravity.

Deborah Bloomfield
Deborah Bloomfield

Related posts:

  1. Canada’s Conservatives pledge big spending, deficit reduction in election platform
  2. Evolito’s electric motors look set to take off in aerospace where YASA left off in automotive
  3. TWIS: Newly Discovered CRISPR-Like Systems May Be Used To Edit Human Genomes, Reconstructed Face Of 50,000-Year-Old Ancient Ancestor, And Much More This Week
  4. Can Peacocks Fly?

Source Link: Astronauts Heading To Mars Might Have A Drug Problem On Their Hands

Filed Under: News

Primary Sidebar

  • Polar Vortex Patterns Explain Winter Cold Snaps Against Background Warming Trend
  • Scientists Tracked An Olm For 2,569 Days And It Did Not Move An Inch
  • Look Out For “Fireballs”: The Best Meteor Shower Of 2025 Is About To Commence, According To NASA
  • Why Do Many Large Language Models Give The Same Answer To This “Random” Number Query?
  • Adidas Jabulani: The World Cup Football So Bad NASA Decided To Study It
  • Beluga Whales Shake Their Blob-Like Melons To Say Hello And Even Woo A Mate, But How?
  • Gravitational Wave Detected From Largest Black Hole Merger Yet: “It Presents A Real Challenge To Our Understanding Of Black Hole Formation”
  • At Over 100 Years Of Age, The World’s Oldest Elephant Passes Away In India
  • Ancient Human DNA Reveals Earliest Zoonotic Diseases Appeared 6,500 Years Ago
  • Boys Are Better At Math? That Could Be Because School Favors Them Over Girls
  • Looptail G: Most People Can’t Recognize A Letter You Have Seen Millions Of Times
  • 24-Million-Year-Old Protein Fragments Are Oldest Ever Recovered, A Robot Listened To Spoken Instructions And Performed Surgery, And Much More This Week
  • DNA From Greenland Sled Dogs – Maybe The World’s Oldest Breed – Reveals 1,000 Years Of Arctic History
  • Why Doesn’t Moonrise Shift By The Same Amount Each Night?
  • Moa De-Extinction, Fashionable Chimps, And Robot Surgery – No Human Required
  • “Human”: Powerful New Images Mark The Most Scientifically Accurate “Hyper-Real 3D Models Of Human Species Ever”
  • Did We Accidentally Leave Life On The Moon In 2019 – And Could We Revive It?
  • 1.8 Million Years Ago, Two Extinct Humans Had One Of The Gnarliest Deaths In History
  • “Powerful Image” Of One Of The World’s Rarest Tigers Exposes The Real Danger In Taman Negara
  • Evolution, Domestication, And A Lot Of Very Good Boys: How Wolves Became Dogs
  • Business
  • Health
  • News
  • Science
  • Technology
  • +1 718 874 1545
  • +91 78878 22626
  • [email protected]
Office Address
Prudour Pvt. Ltd. 420 Lexington Avenue Suite 300 New York City, NY 10170.

Powered by Prudour Network

Copyrights © 2025 · Medical Market Report. All Rights Reserved.

Go to mobile version