Facilities for Inactivity study (9F008-190215/A)
Well-being, Health and Biomedical Discovery
Deadlines
Academic Unit: Inquire with Unit
Memorial Deadline: Thursday 31st, October 2019
External Deadline: Tuesday 5th, November 2019
Description
The Canadian Space Agency (CSA) has issued the Facilities for Inactivity Study Request for Proposal. Specifically, the CSA objective is to “provide the services and facilities necessary for the execution of a head-down tilt bed rest study.”
The CSA and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), Institutes of Aging (IA), Circulatory and Respiratory Health (ICRH), and Musculoskeletal Health and Arthritis (IMHA), in collaboration with the Canadian Frailty Network (CFN), are supporting an inactivity study using a bed rest paradigm that will provide new knowledge on the process of aging, the impact of inactivity on health and that will allow testing of a physical exercise countermeasure intervention. The bed rest paradigm is relevant to the CSA because it offers the best ground analogue of the physiological effects of weightlessness.
The CSA has the responsibility to contract the experimental facility for the study, including the recruitment of participants, the medical supervision of the participants, and the acquisition of the standard measures during the study. CIHR and the Canadian Frailty Network are responsible, following a CIHR Funding Opportunity, for providing the research support funds for eight scientific teams that will provide in-depth analysis of the effects of the bed-rest countermeasure prescribed to the participants.
Few Head Down Tilt Bed Rest (HDTBR) studies have been conducted on subjects between 55 and 65 years old, and the present study will examine the effects of a 6 degrees head down bed rest on healthy volunteers in order to test an exercise countermeasure that aims to efficiently alleviate the symptoms of skeletal unloading in astronauts and in the sedentary population on Earth.
Additional information can be found here.