“To determine the peculiarities in the development of children, whose fathers were subject to radiation impact in their childhood and adolescence outing to the Chernobyl disaster”
(research supervisor – Doctor of Medical Sciences, professor M.M. Korenev, 2009−2011 yrs)
The completed work is devoted to improving the measures for regular medical observation of children whose parents were evacuated from the town of Pripyat in April 1986 or resided on the territories under control in childhood or were resettled in 1986–1994.
Research object: the health of descendants whose parents were evacuated from the town of Pripyat or had been living in their childhood in contaminated with radiation regions after the Chernobyl disaster.
Objective: substantiation of prophylactic medical examination principles for children, whose parents were subject to radiation in childhood and adolescence, based on studying the incidence and nature of variations in their health status.
Methods: conventional clinical, immunologic, instrumental (ECG, PhCS, the heart, the abdominal cavity organs, and the thyroid gland ultrasound investigations), the family genealogy and phenotype descriptions.
Theoretical and practical results: a significant incidence of perinatal period burdened course, high rates of pathological morbidity at different age periods as well as deviations in the immune system indices were established in children, born from parents evacuated from Pripyat or resettled from areas under the control. The most significant changes in physical development, morbidity and immunological resistance were revealed in descendants whose parents had been residing in the contaminated areas in 1986–1989. The highest incidence of abnormal course of the ontogeny early stages was found in children whose parents at the time of the accident had been under seven years of age. The highest level of disharmonious physical development and morbidity in puberty was registered in children from families where the parents at the time of the accident had been twelve years of age or older. Inherited predisposition to the main noncontagious diseases was revealed in 97.1 % of children from families of the exposed parents. An algorithm for dispensary observation of children, whose parents had been exposed to radiation in childhood, was proposed in the study , and the scope of examination and indications for rehabilitation measures for children were also established.
Novelty: a complex clinicoanamnestic, laboratory and instrumental examination of children whose parents had been exposed to radiation in childhood owing to the Chernobyl accident was carried out. There were defined groups of children who require an increased variety of prophylactic medical examination measures depending on the data of their parents’ radiation history.
Effectiveness: implementation of dispensary supervision measures concerning descendants of the parents exposed to radiation will contribute to early diagnosing their pathologies and preventing impairment of their health, as well as reducing treatment and rehabilitation expenses.
Application fields: pediatrics, family medicine, psychiatry, gastroenterology, endocrinology, and genetics.
