Abstract
The spaceflight environment affects the structure and function of the cardiovascular system, including fluid redistribution, alterations in blood pressure, and changes in cardiac output. The goal of this project is to quantitatively synthesize the data on the effects of actual or simulated microgravity on the cardiovascular system. In collaboration with the Ames Life Science Data Archive (ALSDA) Analysis Working Group we developed a list of relevant cardiovascular search terms, based on which medical librarians generated the search strategy in Medline, CINAHL, Embase, and NASA repositories, yielding 18,837 articles. In parallel, we recruited ~100 young professionals through space industry–affiliated organizations. These individuals completed a virtual training course on the nature and methodologies of the project. They initially screened at a rate of 5,000 articles/month; however, individualized training from project supervisors increased this rate to 60,000 articles/month. Following title/abstract screening, 3,539 included articles were labelled and grouped according to population (human, rodent) and experimental methods (simulated microgravity, actual spaceflight) for full-text screening. Full-text screening of ~900 articles in a humans and actual microgravity subgroup is currently underway, with 200 articles now completed. We anticipate that teams will be extracting and curating and submitting data into the new ALSDA submission portal and repository. Our approach reduces the time to complete screening from years to several months, and will enrich publicly accessible datasets for reuse, modeling, and machine learning. Our project provides a unique, open-access educational experience to space research and training in knowledge synthesis tools.