Space mighty mice, Drug That Bulked Up Mice In Space Might Someday

 Space mighty mice, Drug That Bulked Up Mice In Space Might Someday.

Some mighty mice have overcome one of the major obstacles to interplanetary space flight: muscle and bone loss.

The mice got a drug that prevented the usual decreases in muscle and bone mass during a month on the International Space Station, a team reports in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

"The drug was effective not just in preserving the muscle mass and bone mass, but actually caused the muscles and bones to grow," says Dr. Se-Jin Lee, a professor at The Jackson Laboratory and the University of Connecticut.

The mice "had a phenomenal response to the drug without apparently any bad side effects," adds Dr. Emily Germain-Lee, a professor at the University of Connecticut who is a co-author of the paper and married to Lee.

If a drug worked that well in humans, it could help astronauts stay healthy during a voyage to Mars, which could take years.

A human drug also would be a "miracle" for millions of people on Earth who have bones that fracture easily or muscles too weak to allow standing and walking, Germain-Lee says.