Probiotics into outer space: feasibility assessments of encapsulated freeze-dried probiotics during 1 month's storage on the International Space Station.

ABSTRACT: Suppression of immune function during long spaceflights is an issue that needs to be overcome. The well-established probiotic Lactobacillus casei strain Shirota (LcS) could be a promising countermeasure, and we have launched a project to investigate the efficacy of its use on the International Space Station (ISS). As a first step, we developed a specialist probiotic product for space experiments, containing freeze-dried LcS in capsule form (Probiotics Package), and tested its stability through 1 month of storage on the ISS. The temperature inside the ISS ranged from 20.0 to 24.5 °C. The absorbed dose rate of the flight sample was 0.26 mGy/day and the dose equivalent rate was 0.52 mSv/day. The number of live LcS was 1.05 × 10¹¹ colony-forming units/g powder (49.5% of the initial

SUBMITTER: Sakai T 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6048169 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature