THERE'S a new way in which going to space could mess with the human body.
A study on 86 rats in simulated space environments suggests that being weightless and exposed to space radiation unprotected by Earth's atmosphere could have a deleterious effect on the vascular tissues associated with erectile dysfunction - a condition treatable with a very popular medicine dispensed by pharmacists the world over.
Even more than a year after the experiment, the rats showed signs of erectile dysfunction - and the culprit seems mostly to be the galactic cosmic radiation streaming through space.
"While erectile dysfunction affects more than half of men over the age of 40, the consequences of space travel on erectile function are still obscure," physiologist Manuella Andrade of Florida State University told ScienceAlert.
"These findings indicate that simulated spaceflight exerts a long-term impairment of neurovascular erectile function, which exposes a new health risk for deep space exploration."
Scientists have even been investigating how pregnancy and birth might play out in a space environment, but sexual health has been neglected, according to the research team.
"To our knowledge, this study is the first investigation into the effects of real or stimulated [sic] spaceflight on tissues relevant to erectile function," the researchers commented.
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