Seasickness on Astrolabe: Characterization and evaluation of pharmacological countermeasures during turnaround missions.

Motion sickness is present in about 80% of the passengers during missions onboard the Astrolabe with sometimes a very significant risk of dehydration. Our unit specializes in the fundamental study of the vestibular system (inner ear), the sensory organ responsible of visual-vestibular conflict inducing this syndrome, and also provides medical support in parabolic flights (flight reproducing weightlessness) where this syndrome is also strongly present. Since the Astrolabe is a strong and reproducible stimulus triggering seasickness, we would like to characterize the strongest component of the elicitation of motion sickness (psychological component, types of boat movements) and to test 4 protocols of treatment of motion sickness with
medical supervision (1 protocol per year), during turnaround missions of the Astrolabe. This work will be conducted in collaboration with the unit INSERM U 1075 (France) and the military research laboratory VIPER (Royal Military Academy, Belgium) specialized in extreme environments.