What are the causes of anaemia?
NEOCYTOLYSIS experiment The NEOCYTOLYSIS experiment aims at studying the effects of weightlessness on the hemopoietic system, the system of the body responsible for the formation of blood cells. The experiment will study a process called neocytolysis, i.e. the selective destruction of young red blood cells. This process has been observed in astronauts as an adaptive response of the body to the specific condition of weightlessness. In space, in absence of gravity, the blood which is normally held in the extremities by gravity shifts centrally, causing high red cells density in blood vessels in the upper part of the body; this induces a response, which aims at resetting the mass of red blood cells by means of their selective destruction, and that causes in turn a temporary anaemia in astronauts over the first days after landing. This process is therefore regarded for astronauts as a natural response to specific environmental conditions. However, it may also occur in pathological conditio
