Clinical trial NCT04197193: Monitoring Antioxidant/Redox Status at Concordia (MARS-C)
Official title: Monitoring Antioxidant/Redox Status and Replenishing Nitrogen & Sulfur-based Nutrients to Enhance Resilience at Concordia (MARS-C): Understanding Integrated Stress Signalling
Study type: OBSERVATIONAL
Overall status: ACTIVE_NOT_RECRUITING
Conditions: Oxidative Stress
Lead sponsor: University of Southampton
Sponsor class: OTHER
Collaborators: name: European Space Agency
First posted: 2019-12-13
Enrollment: 30
Sex: ALL
Minimum age (years): 18
Standard ages: ADULT
OLDER_ADULT
Accepts healthy volunteers: yes
Observational model: COHORT
Time perspective: PROSPECTIVE
Sampling method: NON_PROBABILITY_SAMPLE
Study population: Over-wintering members of Concordia crew

Brief summary: The European Space Agency (ESA) runs a research centre in Antarctica as an earth-based model for long duration deep-space missions. Just like astronauts travelling into space, crew-members overwintering at this Concordia base are exposed to a number of extreme environmental stressors; including high altitude (approximately 3800m); extreme cold; long periods of 24 hour darkness or daylight; and complete isolation. The investigators will recruit up to 30 over-wintering crew members working at this station for ESA over a 2 year period and observe how their bodies adapt and respond to the stress of living and working in this environment. The investigators will collect blood, saliva and urine samples, together with ultrasound images of muscle mass and grip strength measurements at regular intervals throughout their deployment to Antarctica. These samples will be transported back to Southampton to be analysed for biochemical levels of stress. During the final month of their stay, all participants will be randomised to receive a daily nutritional drink which is either high or low in targeted dietary supplements. Following similar studies that the investigators has successfully performed over shorter durations at high altitudes previously, they hypothesise that levels of stress experienced in extreme environments such as Antarctica or deep space can be reduced with targeted nutritional supplementation. These findings may become important to members of the general public as commercial aviation moves increasingly towards using low space-orbital vehicles to drastically reduce international travel times over the coming decade.


Eligibility criteria: Inclusion Criteria:

* Adult
* Member of Concordia station over-wintering crew
* Able to give written informed consent
* Fluent in either English, French or Italian

Exclusion Criteria:

* Participating in another interventional research study during the deployment to Concordia

Primary outcomes:
measure: Hand grip strength
timeFrame: up to 10 months
Secondary outcomes:
measure: Muscle mass
timeFrame: up to 10 months
measure: Oxidative stress
timeFrame: up to 10 months
measure: Lake Louise Score 2018
timeFrame: up to 10 months
Other outcomes:
Locations:
city: Southampton
country: United Kingdom
facility: University of Southampton
Study officials:
affiliation: University of Southampton
name: Martin Feelisch, PhD
role: PRINCIPAL_INVESTIGATOR
References: