Research progress of deep-underground medicine

Like most mineral countries, China has aimed to develop deep earth resources.Herein, more and more miners will have to face the deep-underground work environment.However, the research on the influence of a deep underground environment on human physiology, psychology and pathology, and its mechanism basically does not exist, especially for the underground environment more than 1 000 m.Therefore, in this study, the deep underground medicine was proposed, which aims to reveal the environmental eects in the deep-underground on the physiology, psychology, and pathology of human, and their mechanisms, and exploit the beneficial elements of the deep-underground, as well as explore the strategies in response to harmful factors.Meanwhile, the scientific work was summarized.From the medical perspective, the environmental parameters in the deep mines were measured.In the deep underground environment, the background radiation decreased, relative humidity and temperature increased, and the radon concentration was in the safe range.Also, the low background radiation of a deep underground environment inhibited the growth of many cells was found.For example, the FD-LSC-1 increased by 37.73% in the control group after two days of culture and only increased by 7.53% in the group in a deep underground environment.And the target cell organs of low background radiation in deep underground might be ribosome and mitochondrion.Additionally, the previous study showed that the cancer cells were more sensitive than the normal cells to the low background radiation in a deep underground environment.Moreover, the psychological health of the workers in a deep underground environment was investigated, and it showed that about 2/3 workers had a bad psychological health and poor sleep.And the poor environmental condition was related to the poor psychological health of these deep underground workers.And then, the perspective research urgently to be carried out in future was put forward.In conclusion, this could provide a reference for future deep underground medical research and service for the miners in deep mines.