Allergies are one of the global medico-social problems affecting mankind. Ailments caused by allergies take the third place after cardio-vascular and oncological disorders and even the first place in certain ecologically affected regions. Over the past 30 years the number of the victims of this disorder has been doubling every 10 years. Despite the progress and achievements of the fundamental areas of biology and medicine, intensive studies of the nature of allergies and development of new methods of treatment and disease prevention, even more acute forms are being observed causing temporary disabilities-reducing the quality of life of many patients. Allergy is often denounced as the "ailment of civilization". In the leading industrial countries the percentage of the affected people (mostly young ones) is much greater than in the developing ones. The reasons include-pollution of the environment with industrial wastes, unfavorable social conditions, increased consumption of medical drugs, intense use of disinfectants at home and at work, emphasis on herbicides and pesticides in farming and the advent of genetically modified foods. According to current statistics from 10 to 30 percent of the urban and rural population of Britain, Germany, France, etc. residing on territories with a highly developed economic potential are affected by allergic disorders. According to epidemiological studies conducted at the Institute of Immunology of the Ministry of Health and Social Development of the Russian Federation pathologies of this kind are present from 15 to 35 percent in different regions of Russia. An article published in the journal "Energia: Ekonomika, Tekhnika, Ecologia" (Energetics: Economics, Technology, Ecology) of the Russian Academy of Sciences, a researcher of this Institute Sergei Polner, Cand. Sc. (Med.) speaks of appreciable economic losses for the cure of not only allergies as such, but of the complications of viral and other infections associated with it. As a ... Читать далее