Vol 16, No 4 (2011)

The paper presents an update on the susceptibility of the central nervous system (CNS) to inflammation in response to injury, infection, or disease. CNS resident cells generate inflammatory mediators, including proinflammatory cytokines, prostaglandins, free radicals, and a complement, which induce chemokines and adhesion molecules, recruit immune cells, and activate glial cells. Inflammation and inflammatory mediators, in turn, cause neurodegeneration and are thus involved in the pathogenesis of acute and chronic mental and CNS diseases. Information is given on the expression of inflammatory mediators, on the mechanisms that regulate inflammation, and on the CNS in brain injury, epilepsy, multiple sclerosis, Alzheimer's disease and Parkinson's disease. The integrative action of inflammatory mediators in combination with processes of ageing burdened with heredity and poor environmental factors plays an important role in the development and prolongation of chronic neurodegeneration and should be kept in mind during therapy for CNS diseases. Emphasis is placed on effective approaches to treating acute neurological impairments (stroke, injury) when the early use of an IL-1 receptor antagonist is of importance and on chronic inflammatory neurodegenerative processes when long-term anti-inflammatory therapy reducing the rate of relapses of the disease and its progression is indicated.

The pseudotuberculosis pathogen Y. pseudotuberculosis and the enteric yersiniasis pathogen Y. enterocolitica may cause both acute and chronic diseases. Widely practically used diagnostic methods are effective in the acute period of the diseases whereas diagnosis verification in the protracted and chronic course of yersiniases remains an urgent problem. For solution of this problem, the authors have developed a cost-effective test system for the serodiagnosis of yersiniases by an immunoblot test, by applying the recombinant proteins of recombinant Yersinia outer membrane proteins, such as YopH (51 kD), YopM (44 kD), YopD (35 kD), and YopE (23 kD). As compared to indirect hemagglutination test, agglutination test, and enzyme immunoassay, the immunoblot test has a high sensitivity and a high specificity and may be promising mainly in diagnosing the chronic forms of Yersinia infection.

A procedure was developed to determine the avidity of antitoxic antidiphtheria antibodies, by using the enzyme immunoassay. It was shown that both total antibodies and their avidity might be estimated in one test. A study of sera from healthy vaccinees could define differences in the time course of changes in the accumulation and loss of both total and highly avid antitoxic antidiphtheria antibodies. Maturation of highly avid antibodies took place more slowly than the total number of antibodies increased whereas loss of highly avid antibodies occurred much more quickly than the total count of antibodies decreased. Five years following regular revaccination, the antibody avidity index achieved its minimal (critical) level while the content of antitoxic antibodies was reduced to critical values (0.01 IU/ml) at 7-8 years after revaccination. Risk groups were identified among the examinees. These included subjects aged over 50 years, medical workers, industrial workers, particularly those engaged in hazardous occupations, subjects with chronic somatic and infectious diseases, and those vaccinated against diphtheria more than 5 years ago.

The paper gives the results of an investigation of the role of reproductive functional state in the pathogenesis of erysipelas in men and women. There are gender-related differences in the clinical course of the disease.

Over the period 1999 to 2009, in the Volgograd Region there were 526 notified cases of West Nile fever (WNF), of them 46 (8.7%) patients died. The bulk of the patients were registered during its epidemic outbreak in 1999. The paper shows a trend in human morbidity and its association with the infection rates of mosquito carriers. It defines a role of birds, crows (Corvidae) in particular, in the active prevalence of WNF in the Volgograd Region. The data given in the Volgograd Region led to the conclusion that there was a sustained secondary natural focus of WNF with an epicenter being in the Volga-Aktyubinsk floodplain and with the involvement of Volgograd and Volzhsky into the epidemic process.

The paper describes a case of acute schistosomiasis caused by S. mansoni in a Moscow tourist who has visited Tanzania. It is noted that it is objectively difficult to parasitologically confirm this infestation in its acute stage. The problems of the accessibility of information on the prevention of tropical diseases in tourists are discussed.