Presentations

A principal biological role of the immune system is an eradication of both external as well internal violators of integrity of the organism. External „enemies“ are represented mainly by germs; those of internal origin belong especially to potentially malignant cells that appear in our organisms as the results of a breakdown of their replication mechanisms.Under certain circumstances, however, the immune response can have deleterious effects, resulting in significant tissue damage or even death. This inappropriate immune response is termed hypersensitivity. Although the word hypersensitivity implies an increased response, the response is not always heightened but may, instead, be an inappropriate immune response to an antigen.
Several forms of hypersensitive reaction can be distinguished, reflecting differences in the effector molecules generated in the course of the reaction. In immediate hypersensitive reactions different antibody isotypes induce different immune effector molecules. IgE antibodies, for example, induce mast cell degranulation with release of histamine and other biologically active molecules. IgG and IgM antibodies, on the other hand, induce hypersensitive reactions by activating complement. The effector molecules in these reactions are the membrane-attack complex and such complement split products as C3a, C4a and C5a. In delayed-type hypersensitivity reactions, the effector molecules are various cytokines secreted by T helper cells and macrophages. As it became clear that different immune mechanisms can give rise to hypersensitive reactions, P. G. H. Gell and R. R. A. Coombs proposed a classification scheme in which hypersensitive reactions are divided into four types, I, II, III, and IV, each involving distinct mechanisms; later type V was added. Antibodies mediate four types of hypersensitive reactions: IgE-mediated (type I), cytotoxic (type II), immune complex (type III), and stimulatory/inhibitory (type V) hypersensitivity, respectively. T cells initiate the last type of hypersensitivity (type IV) and clinical symptoms appear more days after exposure; it is therefore referred to as delayed-type hypersensitivity (DTH). However, a great deal of com¬plexity exists within each type of reactions that blurs the boundaries between them.
 

The principal role of the immune system is to protect the organism from principally two the most dangerous events potentially threatening our life, i.e. infection and malignancy. However, sometimes the immune system instead of reacting against foreign and aberrant self-antigens can attack self-molecules. This inappropriate response of the immune system against self-components is termed autoimmunity.
There are 70 - 80 autoimmune disorders known till now and app. 5% of Caucasoid population suffers from them. Our understanding of autoimmunity has improved greatly during the last two decades, mainly because of the development of a variety of animal models of these diseases and the identification of genes that may predispose to autoimmunity. Nevertheless, the aetiology of most human autoimmune diseases remains still obscure.
The term “autoimmunity” is often erroneously used for a disease in which immune reactions accompany tissue injury; they are “a by-product” of a release of self-antigens to circulation without causing any damage; moreover, these “autoimmune reactions” help to degrade them and to remove them from the body.

The lecture deals with primary and secondary immunodefeciencies. It gives an overview on general clinical manifestations and their divisions according to the type of the immune functions defects. Must of the lecture devotes to AIDS.     

Incidence of toxocarosis in Slovakia 1977-1990 showed an exponential increase with an accessory cycling, having 7-8 years period length.                                                 

Annual incidence rates of 3157 cases of leptospiroses recorded within 1949 and 2004, caused by the main serovars ificant or borderly significant periodicities, resembling those known from solar and geomagnetic activity, were identified. By comparing them with the time course of Wolf numbers, an almost exact reciprocity of maxima and minima of Wolf numbers and leptospiroses was disclosed. It is hypothetized that the epizoonotic character of these diseases supports the putative dependence of its manifestation upon the nature including the sun. Surprisingly, no similar results were found, so far, in the world scientific registers.

Russian scientist Tchijevskij investigated almost 100 years ago (suggested for Nobel prize) relationships between solar activity, cycling with the period around 11 years, and the status of mankind. He found „social excitation“, as revolutions and wars, at the time of solar maxima and peaceful activities like flourishing of arts at minima.The present paper explores whether such a parallelism applies also to the 500 years´ (semimillenial) cycling of solar activity. The present author obtained, using the cosinor analysis, significant positive anwer. It is hypothesized that one of the responsible factors could be solar impact on geomagnetic field.

The 100th anniversary of the Student´s statistical t-distribution is commemorated.                                                                                                                                                                              

The monthly registered Wolf numbers (i.e the numbers of sunspots), solar flares index and Ap index of the geomagnetic activity values display negative regression dependence („negatively correlate“) upon the monthly observed numbers of new cases of cerebral infarction.This phenomenon is present with delays from -6 months (infarction before the cosmogeophysical measurement) up to + 17 months (infarction after the cosmogeophysical measurement),with the most pronounced relationship for delay of +5 months.

Distinct increase in the incidence of this disease, observed in Central and Eastern Europe recently, was registered also in Slovak children. Nevertheless, an original finding is the significant presence of 10-11-years cycling, corresponding probably with that in the solar activity, and of 7-years cycling, known for geomagnetic activity These periodicities are superposed on an increasing linear trend, affirmed in some Western „main stream“ journals (e.g.Diabetologia) as the only pattern in this issue.

Yearly numbers of new cases of this disease, collected over one half century,were processed by uncostomed biometrical tools – testing of randomness of the time sequence using Poisson and „contagious“ distributions, cosinor regression and crosscorrelation.The older experience of these authors – cycling of the daily numbers of cases during synodic lunar cycle – has been extended to the years´ scales: cycling contemporal with the Moon nutation period was found as significant. It is another evidence for a putative effect of gravity on bacterial virulence of Salmonella. In the mean time, experiments in NASA laboratories,USA found a dangerous increase of Salmonella virulence in microgravity conditions. Practical consequencies for the medical securing of space flight crews are indicated.