An overview of the endocrine and metabolic changes in manned space flight

In the years since the Skylab Program, endocrinology and metabolism have gone through stages of development that can be characterized as descriptive, both physiological and biochemical. At the present time, this area demonstrates a significant increase in knowledge of endocrine and metabolic function in physiology and pathology at the biochemical level. The development of sensitive techniques for the measurement of hormones, their precursors and metabolites and the increasing amount of information on integrated endocrine responses in various physiologic processes make it valuable for us to retrospectively consider our space flight findings especially in considering future work.