[Problems of forensic medical assessment of neurological manifestations of injury of the caudal spine and ways to solve them]. / Problemy sudebno-meditsinskoi otsenki nevrologicheskikh proyavlenii ushiba kaudal'nykh otdelov spinnogo mozga i puti ikh resheniya.

The aim of the work is to consider the problematic issues of forensic medical assessment of neurological manifestations of injure of the caudal spine. The current edition of the Medical criteria of characteristics doesn't contain clear qualification and interpretation of definitions of the health severity in patients with injury of the caudal spine. Proposed to determine the health damage by the outcome in accordance with the degree of persistent loss of general ability to work when examining spine injuries with clinically established neurological deficits in the absence of danger to human life.

[Sensitive nonradioactive screening method for compounds interacting with alpha7-cholinoreceptor]. / Chuvstvitel'nyi neradioaktivnyi metod skrininga soedinenii, vzaimodeistvuiushchikh s neironnym alpha7-kholinoretseptorom.

A sensitive nonradioactive method for detection of substances interacting with the neuronal nicotinic acetylcholine alpha 7-type receptor (AChR) was proposed. The method uses biotinylated alpha-cobratoxin (Bt-CTX) and is based on the ability of the N-terminal ligand-binding extracellular domain (LBED) of AChR to interact with alpha-cobratoxin (CTX) as does the whole receptor. LBED was produced by heterologic expression of a gene fragment of the alpha 7 subunit of AChR from the rat brain in Escherichia coli cells sorbed on wells of a 96-well plate and incubated with Bt-CTX. The specifically bound Bt-CTX was determined by staining with streptavidin-peroxidase complex. The ability of other compounds to interact with alpha 7-AChR was checked according to the degree with which they inhibit Bt-CTX binding to LBED. Nicotine, carbamylcholine, d-tubocurarin, anabaseine, conotoxin ImI, and neurotoxin II were used as model compounds. The sensitivity of this method was comparable with that of the radioligand method (up to 10 pmol).