[The multifunctional therapy of various forms of irritable bowel syndrome].

Unlabelled: Irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) is a pathological condition characterized by heterogeneous etiology, pathogenesis, and clinical symptoms. These characteristics dictate the necessity of prescribing multiple medications for the treatment of IBS. Such compulsory polypharmacy inadvertently enhances the risk of adverse reactions to the treatment, increases its cost, and impairs compliance on the part of the patients.

[Description of a case of severe Q fever].

The paper considers a rare clinical case of severe Q fever in a young man with no compromised premorbid background. It describes and analyzes clinical manifestations and laboratory findings with consideration for the current data available in the literature. The issues of the differential diagnosis, laboratory diagnosis, and treatment of Q fever are discussed.

[BRILL-ZINSER DISEASE AS A CONSEQUENCE OF RICKETTSIA PROWAZEKII PERSISTENCE IN PREVIOUSLY ILL WHO HAVE HAD EPIDEMIC TYPHUS (EPIDEMIOLOGIC ASPECTS)].

Materials, that summarize data of original research and scientific literature on epidemiology and problems of persistence during epidemic typhus, whose causative agent (Rickettsia prowazekii) is reactivated in the organism of the previously ill and is manifested as Brill-Zinser disease, are presented. A retrospective analysis was carried out with the data obtained by Russian (All-Union) Centre for Rickettsioses during study of epidemiologic examination maps of 5705 typhus nidi and results of 19 463 blood sera analysis during study of immunologic structure of population in the territories of the former USSR for the period from 1970 to 1992. A decrease of epidemic typhus morbidity and an increase of the fraction of Brill-Zinser disease took place as a result of pediculosis corporis control.