The modification of the ground state properties of light atomic nuclei in the nuclear and stellar medium is addressed, using chemical equilibrium constants evaluated from a new analysis of the intermediate energy heavy-ion (Xe$+$Sn) collision data measured by the INDRA collaboration. Three different reactions are considered, mainly differing by the isotopic content of the emission source. The thermodynamic conditions of the data samples are extracted from the measured multiplicities allowing for a parametrization of the in-medium modification, determined with the single hypothesis that the different nuclear species in a given sample correspond to a unique common value for the density of the expanding source. We show that this correction, which was not considered in previous analyses of chemical constants from heavy ion collisions, is necessary, since the observables of the analyzed systems show strong deviations from the expected results for an ideal gas of free clusters. This data set is further compared to a relativistic mean-field model, and seen to be reasonably compatible with a universal correction of the attractive $sigma$-meson coupling.
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