ArticleNPJ microgravity2021
Effects of spaceflight aboard the International Space Station on mouse estrous cycle and ovarian gene expression.
Article in NPJ microgravity, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 29 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
29 citing papers in PubMed, 40 citations in OpenAlex.
- Artificial gravity protects bone and prevents bone marrow adipose tissue accumulation in humans during 60 d of bed rest.Journal of bone and mineral research : the official journal of the American Society for Bone and Mineral Research · 2025Trial
- The transgenerational toll of maternal spaceflight.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2026Article
- Automated behavioral segmentation and markerless pose tracking of mice during spaceflight.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- A systematic review of microgravity on reproductive systems: Implications for space biology and human health.iScience · 2026Review
- Spaceflight and Ground-Based Microgravity Simulation Impact on Cognition and Brain Plasticity.International journal of molecular sciences · 2025Review
- A Deep Learning Framework for Multi-Object Tracking in Space Animal Behavior Studies.Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2025Article
- Microgravity impairs endocrine signaling and reproductive health of women. A narrative review.Frontiers in physiology · 2025Review
- Exploring the Idea of Human Reproduction in Space: A Potential Area for Future Research.Cureus · 2024Review
- The Formation of Stable Lung Tumor Spheroids during Random Positioning Involves Increased Estrogen Sensitivity.Biomolecules · 2024Article
- To boldly go where no microRNAs have gone before: spaceflight impact on risk for small-for-gestational-age infants.Communications biology · 2024Article
- Weightlessness leads to an increase granulosa cells in the growing follicle.NPJ microgravity · 2024Article
- Aging and putative frailty biomarkers are altered by spaceflight.Scientific reports · 2024Article
- Spaceflight induces changes in gene expression profiles linked to insulin and estrogen.Communications biology · 2024Article
- Spatially resolved multiomics on the neuronal effects induced by spaceflight in mice.Nature communications · 2024Article
- Sexual dimorphism during integrative endocrine and immune responses to ionizing radiation in mice.Scientific reports · 2024Article
- Influence of microgravity on spontaneous calcium activity of primary hippocampal neurons grown in microfluidic chips.NPJ microgravity · 2024Article
- The effect of space travel on human reproductive health: a systematic review.NPJ microgravity · 2024Review
- Long-term space missions' effects on the human organism: what we do know and what requires further research.Frontiers in physiology · 2024Review
- The Oxidative Phosphorylation and Cytoskeleton Proteins of Mouse Ovaries after 96 Hours of Hindlimb Suspension.Life (Basel, Switzerland) · 2023Article
- Bone marrow adiposity modulation after long duration spaceflight in astronauts.Nature communications · 2023Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
7 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
Ovarian steroids dramatically impact normal homeostatic and metabolic processes of most tissues within the body, including muscle, bone, neural, immune, cardiovascular, and reproductive systems. Determining the effects of spaceflight on the ovary and estrous cycle is, therefore, critical to our understanding of all spaceflight experiments using female mice. Adult female mice (n = 10) were exposed to and sacrificed on-orbit after 37 days of spaceflight in microgravity. Contemporary control (preflight baseline, vivarium, and habitat; n = 10/group) groups were maintained at the Kennedy Space Center, prior to sacrifice and similar tissue collection at the NASA Ames Research Center. Ovarian tissues were collected and processed for RNA and steroid analyses at initial carcass thaw. Vaginal wall tissue collected from twice frozen/thawed carcasses was fixed for estrous cycle stage determinations. The proportion of animals in each phase of the estrous cycle (i.e., proestrus, estrus, metestrus, and diestrus) did not appreciably differ between baseline, vivarium, and flight mice, while habitat control mice exhibited greater numbers in diestrus. Ovarian tissue steroid concentrations indicated no differences in estradiol across groups, while progesterone levels were lower (p < 0.05) in habitat and flight compared to baseline females. Genes involved in ovarian steroidogenic function were not differentially expressed across groups. As ovarian estrogen can dramatically impact multiple non-reproductive tissues, these data support vaginal wall estrous cycle classification of all female mice flown in space. Additionally, since females exposed to long-term spaceflight were observed at different estrous cycle stages, this indicates females are likely undergoing ovarian cyclicity and may yet be fertile.
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.