[Telomere length as a biomarker of the risk of cardiovascular complications in patients with coronary heart disease].

AIM: To study the effect of oxidative stress and telomere length in the chromosomes of blood leukocytes in patients with coronary heart disease (CHD) on the development of cardiovascular complications. MATERIALS AND METHODS: In 119 patients with CHD, the level of oxidatively modified low-density lipoproteins (ox-LDL) in blood plasma and the length of telomeres in nuclear blood cells were determined during the examination. After 5 years, a telephone survey of patients (or their relatives) was conducted to obtain data on the presence of cardiovascular complications. Telomere length was determined using quantitative real-time PCR, and the level of ox-LDL was determined by immunochemical method. RESULTS: It was found that reducing the length of telomeres in patients with CHD increases the risk of subsequent development of cardiovascular complications. A strong negative correlation was found between the level of ox-LDL and telomere length in the group of examined CHD patients who had cardiovascular complications after 5 years. CONCLUSION: CHD patients with short telomere length and high levels of ox-LDL have an increased risk of cardiovascular complications during 5 years.

SURGICAL STRATEGY FOR LARGE EXTRACEREBRAL SUBTENTORIAL TUMORS.

Radical surgery over large subtentorial tumors is associated with a high risk of postoperative complications. Despite significant development of imaging technology, intraoperative monitoring, and microsurgical treatment, problems one of tottal and safe large subtentorial tumors removal remain unsolved. The most critical problem relating to large tumors of this localization is postoperative edema. Also brainstem ischemic stroke is not rare and this would partly due to the tumors overgrowthing the vertebral and basilar arteries. Retrospective analysis of 59 patients with large (more than 3 cm) tumors to the posterior cranial fossa operated over 2015-2019 yy. There was gross total tumor removal in 49 (83%) patients; subtotal tumor removal in 5 (8,5%) patients; partial tumor removal in 5 (8,5%) cases. Complications occurred in 15 (25%) patients. The use of ventral craniobasal aprroaches and their combination with posterior-lateral approaches to the large subtentorial tumors allows rapid and early, effective brain stem decompression and subsequent safe and total tumor removal. Ventral decompression of the brain stem structures (endoscopic endonasal and transoral approaches, presigmoid approach, extreme lateral approach) prevents neurological complications thus early patients activation. Postoperative mortality of 3 (5.0%) out of 59 patients can be reduced by intensifying perioperative patient's management.

Towards an alternative testing strategy for nanomaterials used in nanomedicine: lessons from NanoTEST.

In spite of recent advances in describing the health outcomes of exposure to nanoparticles (NPs), it still remains unclear how exactly NPs interact with their cellular targets. Size, surface, mass, geometry, and composition may all play a beneficial role as well as causing toxicity. Concerns of scientists, politicians and the public about potential health hazards associated with NPs need to be answered. With the variety of exposure routes available, there is potential for NPs to reach every organ in the body but we know little about the impact this might have. The main objective of the FP7 NanoTEST project ( www.nanotest-fp7.eu ) was a better understanding of mechanisms of interactions of NPs employed in nanomedicine with cells, tissues and organs and to address critical issues relating to toxicity testing especially with respect to alternatives to tests on animals. Here we describe an approach towards alternative testing strategies for hazard and risk assessment of nanomaterials, highlighting the adaptation of standard methods demanded by the special physicochemical features of nanomaterials and bioavailability studies. The work has assessed a broad range of toxicity tests, cell models and NP types and concentrations taking into account the inherent impact of NP properties and the effects of changes in experimental conditions using well-characterized NPs. The results of the studies have been used to generate recommendations for a suitable and robust testing strategy which can be applied to new medical NPs as they are developed.

[Intraoperative plasty of complex defects of the bones and soft tissues in a craniofacial region].

The results of treatment of 159 patients, suffering craniofacial region tumors, were analyzed. In tumoral invasion of cranial bones with affection of the head soft tissues the bone defects dimensions were determined and the implants prepared preoperatively, the soft tissues defects were closed, using transposition or free microsurgical transplantation of the tissues composite complexes. The complex approach application have permitted to close the bones and soft tissues defects of the head craniofacial region with achievement of subsequent functional and aesthetic result.

[Epidemiological peculiarities of working day losses among military personnel of Ukrainian Armed Forces].

Peculiarities of working day losses caused by infectious and parasite diseases among military personnel of Ukrainian Armed Forces in the period of formation, reorganization, reformation and restructuring of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in 1991-2008 are defined in the article based on retrospective epidemiological analysis.

Legislation for Ukraine's public health: the current situation and paths to further development.

The paper contains the findings of an analytical study of the current national health care legislation of Ukraine and identification of priority areas in its further development. One of the key objectives of the above study was to identify the compliance of the national healthcare legal framework with the approaches to health policy formation, which are set out in the documents of global and European regional international organizations, and to assess whether the national legislation includes that spectrum of functions that are to be covered by the health care legislation. The analysis showed that Ukraine's national healthcare legislation is rather strong and well developed. Though the national healthcare legislation is mostly in line with international approaches to the state health care policy formulation, the issue of enforcing already adopted laws and by-laws and ensuring their compliance by all legally established bodies, including state authorities and self-governments, citizens, NGOs, etc, is problematic.

[Prooxidant-antioxidant condition under increased convulsive activity]. / Stan prooksydantno-antyoksydantnoho statusu pry pidvyshchenii sudomnii aktyvnosti.

During the clinical-biochemical research it was found that the trand's manner of epileptic disease in general is determined by the oxidative-antioxidant balance condition in the sick organism. The experimental research, made on rats, which were under bemegrid kindling confirmed the supposition that the pro-antioxidant brain balance disruption is one of the major factors in the increased convulsive activity development and probably plays the key role in the genesis and clinical revelation of epilepsy.

Neuronal basis of the motion aftereffect reconsidered.

Several fMRI studies have reported MT+ response increases correlated with perception of the motion aftereffect (MAE). However, attention can strongly affect MT+ responses, and subjects may naturally attend more to the MAE than control trials without MAE. We found that requiring subjects to attend to motion on both MAE and control trials produced equal levels of MT+ response, suggesting that attention may have confounded the interpretation of previous experiments; in our data, attention accounts for the entire effect. After eliminating this confound, we observed that direction-selective motion adaptation produced a direction-selective imbalance in MT+ responses (and earlier visual areas), and yielded a corresponding asymmetry in speed discrimination thresholds. These findings provide physiological evidence that population level response imbalances underlie the MAE, and quantify the relative proportions of direction-selective neurons across human visual areas.

Task-related modulation of visual cortex.

We performed a series of experiments to quantify the effects of task performance on cortical activity in early visual areas. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was used to measure cortical activity in several cortical visual areas including primary visual cortex (V1) and the MT complex (MT+) as subjects performed a variety of threshold-level visual psychophysical tasks. Performing speed, direction, and contrast discrimination tasks produced strong modulations of cortical activity. For example, one experiment tested for selective modulations of MT+ activity as subjects alternated between performing contrast and speed discrimination tasks. MT+ responses modulated in phase with the periods of time during which subjects performed the speed discrimination task; that is, MT+ activity was higher during speed discrimination than during contrast discrimination. Task-related modulations were consistent across repeated measurements in each subject; however, significant individual differences were observed between subjects. Together, the results suggest 1) that specific changes in the cognitive/behavioral state of a subject can exert selective and reliable modulations of cortical activity in early visual cortex, even in V1; 2) that there are significant individual differences in these modulations; and 3) that visual areas and pathways that are highly sensitive to small changes in a given stimulus feature (such as contrast or speed) are selectively modulated during discrimination judgments on that feature. Increasing the gain of the relevant neuronal signals in this way may improve their signal-to-noise to help optimize task performance.

Color signals in human motion-selective cortex.

The neural basis for the effects of color and contrast on perceived speed was examined using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Responses to S cone (blue-yellow) and L + M cone (luminance) patterns were measured in area V1 and in the motion area MT+. The MT+ responses were quantitatively similar to perceptual speed judgments of color patterns but not to color detection measures. We also measured cortical motion responses in individuals lacking L and M cone function (S cone monochromats). The S cone monochromats have clear motion-responsive regions in the conventional MT+ position, and their contrast-response functions there have twice the responsivity of S cone contrast-response functions in normal controls. But, their responsivity is far lower than the normals' responsivity to luminance contrast. Thus, the powerful magnocellular input to MT+ is either weak or silent during photopic vision in S cone monochromats.

Texture density aftereffects in the perception of artificial and natural textures.

Three experiments are reported concerning the texture density aftereffect. The experiments address the question of how visual texture density information is encoded by examining patterns of transfer between different textures. In the first two experiments, it is shown that manipulation of spatial frequency and orientation information does not affect the direction of the aftereffect of density (reduction in perceived density), though similarity between adaptation and test textures does influence aftereffect strength. The third experiment demonstrates that adaptation to density differences in artificial textures in which spatial frequency information is held constant produces density aftereffects in naturalistic test textures in which density and spatial frequency covary.