ASGSB 1998 Annual Meeting Abstracts

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THE EFFECTIVENESS OF THREE PHARMACEUTICAL COUNTER-MEASURES IN PREVENTING VESTIBULAR DISORIENTATION WHILE MAINTAINING COGNITIVE ABILITY.  R.K. Bashyal¹, D. Woodard², and D.J. Thomas³. ¹Dept of Biological Sciences, Univ of Illinois, Urbana/Champaign, IL, ²The Bionetics Corporation, KSC, FL, ³Dept of Biological Sciences, University of Idaho, Moscow, ID

The effects of three pharmaceutical motion sickness countermeasures were measured in this experiment. Specific interest in this study was directed towards occupational motion sickness. Twenty human subjects were subjected to a fifteen minute rotational exposure on a custom built tilt chair at 15 rpm once a week for four weeks. Each exposure examined the effects of a different pharmaceutical treatment: scopolamine, cinnarizine, meclizine hydrochloride, or placebo. Objective cognitive data was obtained through the administration of a digit span test and subjective symptom data was collected by questionnaire during and after exposure. Subjects under meclizine treatment were found to have much greater tolerance of the rotational exposure than any of the other experimental groups (P value<0.05). In addition, the mean intensity of the motion sickness symptoms, measured every minute during exposure, for those subjects under meclizine treatment peaked at 0.842 (at the fourteenth minute) on a 0-4 scale, which indicated that the symptoms were below a noticeable threshold. Scopolamine and cinnarizine had average peak levels that indicated significantly higher symptom intensity than experienced under meclizine treatment. Subjects under placebo treatment had the lowest threshold among all groups with a peak of 2.316 (mean at the fourteenth minute), a level approaching a threshold that would prevent the completion of a complex task. The digit-span test indicated that no significant differences exist between any of the counter-measures or placebo in maintaining cognitive function level. Future studies with larger sample sizes and a wider variety of counter-measures will aid in determining the optimal pharmaceutical combination to combat occupational motion sickness.

(Supported by the NASA Space Life Sciences Training Program)

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