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Aim: Genotyping of B. pertussis strains isolated from pertussis patients in Moscow., Materials and Methods: 53 strains of B. pertussis isolated from pertussis patients in Moscow in 2007 - 2010 as well as 3 vaccine strains currently used in Russia for the production of DTP vaccine were studied by multilocus sequencing (MLST) based on allele combinations of ptxA, ptxC and tcfA genes., Results: A genetic characteristic of B. pertussis strains isolated from pertussis patients in Moscow by using MLST is presented. Allele profile analysis of the studied B. pertussis strains was performed, 4 sequence types (ST) were identified--ST1, ST2, ST3 and ST5, most of the circulating strains (86.7%) were shown to belong to ST5, equal percentage of cases (5.7%)--to ST2 and ST3, and 1.9%--to ST1, while 2 vaccine production strains belong to ST2 and 1 - to ST1., Conclusion: Clonal structure of contemporary Moscow strains was shown to be different from strain structure used for the production of DTP vaccine.

The developed direct method for the laboratory diagnosis of pertussis, which is based on isothermal amplification technologies, has a high (100%) specificity and sensitivity (102 m.cl.), can detect the pathogen of the disease just in the clinical sample from a patient within 7-8 hours after start of the study. The clinical trials conducted at Infectious Diseases Hospital One (Moscow) on examination of 103 patients (63 patients with the clinical diagnosis of pertussis and 40 with other respiratory tract diseases) provided evidence its high specificity and diagnostic efficiency as compared with a bacteriological test, the efficiency in different clinical types of the disease and during examinations of patients in different periods after the onset of the disease, as well as during examinations of patients with suspected pertussis and pertussis-like diseases.

This paper presents the results of the study of immunological effects of long-term low-level exposure of rats to microwaves. Rats were exposed in the far field to 2450 MHz continuous wave fields providing an incident power density at the cages of 500 microW/cm2 for 7 hours daily for a total of 30 days, resulting in a whole-body SAR of 0.16 +/- 0.04 W/kg. Effects of the exposure on immunological parameters in the brain and liver of rats were studied using Complement Fixation Test at low temperature (4 degrees C). Three groups ("EMF-exposure", "sham-exposure" and cage-control) were formed, each consisting of 16 rats. On the 14th day after the 30-day exposure, titers of antibodies against brain tissue were 0.69 +/- 0.08 in the cage-control group, 0.89 +/- 0.05 in the sham-exposed group and 1.19 +/- 0.07 in the EMF-exposed group. The appearance of antibodies against liver antigens was less. The increase in titres of antibodies against brain homogenates in the sham-exposed and EMF-exposed groups could be explained by the stress-reaction of the animals and autoimmunization of organism.

Materials reflecting the dynamics of pertussis morbidity during the period of 1958 - 2003 under the conditions of prolonged mass immunization of the child population with adsorbed DPT vaccine are presented. The planned vaccination of children led to the decrease of pertussis morbidity during the first 10 years, but groundless abstentions from vaccination during the 1980s - 1990s contributed to a sharp rise in morbidity among children of younger age groups. During the recent four years a rise in pertussis morbidity was registered in 2000 (71.79 per 100,000 of the population), followed by the most significant for the last 20 years drop in morbidity in 2002--down to 9.89. But in 2003 the growth of morbidity was again registered (38.67). Recently periodic rises and drops in morbidity occurred simultaneously with the increased coverage of children of younger age groups with vaccination. In recent years changes in the age structure of patients were observed: the specific proportion of school children increased (in 2003 morbidity rates in children aged 6 - 10 years were 288.6 - 270.7), simultaneously high morbidity among children aged up to one year (274.9) was registered. The specific proportion of pertussis-affected children aged above 7 years reached 65%. From the late 1990s until present in 87.1% of cases strains of serotype 1.0.3 prevailed in the population of B. pertussis strains. But in recent years the circulation of strains 1.2.3, spread in the prevaccination period and having toxicity similar to that of strains of serotype 1.0.3, while exceeding them in virulence, in sufficiently high proportion (7.0% in 2002) was noted. This was indicative of the possibility of the unfavorable development of the epidemic process of pertussis infection.

In the experiments on dogs and mice it was shown that indometophene could modify the immune status of the body. Specific and non-specific resistance of mice to E. coli infection increased after indometophene administration. At the same time higher titers of normal anti-salmonella antibodies in mice serum and a higher phagocytic activity of neutrophils in the peripheral blood in dogs were found. The influence of the preparation on the content of the complement and normal antibodies-hemagglutinins was less pronounced. It was suggested that the indometophene ability to bustle immune reactivity of the body played a certain role in the mechanism of its radioprotective effect.

A total of 965 parallel tests for coli bacilli were carried out using the wash-out or print methods in the course of sanitary and epidemiologic inspection of different objects. The methods used in the study were equally sensitive and provided compatible results which were in good correlation. The print method with bacterial tests is more rapid (by 24 hours) and helps detect other bacteria which grow in Endo's medium; moreover, it is three times cheaper than the labor-consuming wash-out method.