The ageing rate of workers engaged in chrome ore processing.

Background: According to the modern concept of occupational medicine adopted by the World Health Organization, relationship between health and work is fully established while the levels of physical, chemical and biological harmful production factors can be considered as causative factors of occupational diseases.

Objective: The aim of this research is to determine the aging rate of at risk workers engaged in chrome ore processing in order to increase their health status and quality of life.

Methods: Biological age (BA) of workers was calculated by measuring the blood pressure, static balance (SB), respiratory rate (RR) and by a questionnaire survey on subjective health assessment (SHA).

Statistical analysis of the dynamics of antibody loss to a disease-causing agent: plague in natural populations of great gerbils as an example.

We propose a new stochastic framework for analysing the dynamics of the immunity response of wildlife hosts against a disease-causing agent. Our study is motivated by the need to analyse the monitoring time-series data covering the period from 1975 to 1995 on bacteriological and serological tests-samples from great gerbils being the main host of Yersinia pestis in Kazakhstan. Based on a four-state continuous-time Markov chain, we derive a generalized nonlinear mixed-effect model for analysing the serological test data.

Plague metapopulation dynamics in a natural reservoir: the burrow system as the unit of study.

The ecology of plague (Yersinia pestis infection) in its ancient foci in Central Asia remains poorly understood. We present field data from two sites in Kazakhstan where the great gerbil (Rhombomys opimus) is the major natural host. Family groups inhabit and defend burrow systems spaced throughout the landscape, such that the host population may be considered a metapopulation, with each occupied burrow system a subpopulation.

[The mutagenic effect of polymorphonuclear leukocytes on Yersinia pestis].

As the result of in vitro experiments, Y. pestis auxotrophic mutants have been obtained under the influence of polymorphonuclear lymphocytes obtained from guinea pigs, previously immunized with Y. pestis strain EV.

[Changes in the antimicrobial potential of the phagocytosing cells of great gerbils in experimental plague].

The work deals with the results obtained in the study of the activity of the cytocidal systems of phagocytes in great gerbils under normal conditions and during the plague infectious process. The data have been analyzed in comparison with the corresponding characteristics of phagocytic activity in mice. Changes in the oxygen-dependent metabolism (ODM) of neutrophils and macrophages, responsible for the functioning of their oxygen-dependent cytocidal systems, in plague show features characteristic of the nonspecific systemic postaggression reaction (SPAR).