Lectures

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.

The 24-hour profile of hourly registered extrasystoles mean counts per one subjest in apparently healthy elderly males was studied with the aid of Halberg cosinor regression.

Rotor syndrome is a rare familial conjugated hyperbilirubinaemia with notmal liver histology and unknown cause. The hypothesis was tested that it can be an allele variant of Dubin-Johnson syndrome, caused by mutation in ABCC2 gene. The ABCC2 gene and protein were investigated in two patients with this syndrome. No sequence variations were found in 32 exons, adjacent intronic regions and the promoter region of ABCC2. Accordingly, Rotor syndrome is not an allelic variant of ABCC2 deficiency.

Cytokines are soluble peptides that induce activation, proliferation and differentiation of cells of the immune system. Moreover, cytokines influence functions of cells of other tissues and organs, esp. of nervous and endocrine systems. They act in very low concentrations (10-10 M) what makes them to be like hormones. However, hormones tend to be produced constitutively and are produced by endocrine organs. Cytokines, on the contrary, are secreted after activation of particular cells and secretion is short-lived, generally ranging from a few hours to a few days and there are no specialised organs for their synthesis. Cytokines influence target cell in 4 different ways, synergistic, antagonistic, pleiotropic, and redundant way, respectively. They ca act in a autocrine, paracrine and endocrine manner. There are many cytokines that can be divided into those regulating innate and adaptive immunity, to the group of cytokines endowed by chemotactic properties and those supporting growth of hematopoietic and immune system cells.

Histocompatibility molecules are genetically determined proteins present in membranes of all nucleated cells. They form a unique system for which the term “Major Histocompatibility Complex (MHC)” was coined. Each vertebrate species is characterised by its own MHC; that of humans has an abbreviation HLA. This acronym is derived from the words: “human leucocyte antigens” as its fist molecules were discovered in membranes of leucocytes.