Considering the raft of information about the coronavirus infection in the Internet most of which cannot be considered not only as evidence-based medicine but even as proven or scientific, we are going to perform analysis of published literature and present you all the up-to-date data on coronavirus infection in the world in our journal in every issue.

Background. Meningococcal infection (MI) is one of the most dangerous infectious diseases with high rates of complications and mortality, especially in infants. The aim of the study is to estimate the dynamics of the number of cases and safety of primary MI prevention with the use of polysaccharide and conjugated vaccines against serogroups A, C, Y and W-135 among the children’s population.

Methods. Dynamics of tetravalent vaccines against meningococcal infection use was studied in the Centre of preventive vaccination at infectious diseases hospital (Krasnodar) among healthy children aged from 9 months to 18 years. The study period was from January 2914 to November 2019. Vaccination safety (conjugate vaccine as the example) was estimated according to the number and severity of local and general side effects developed within 30 minutes and 5 days after vaccination (maximum up to 10th day). Postponed side effects were recorded via phone survey of the parents.

Results. During the study the number of vaccinated with tetravalent polysaccharide (n=264) or conjugated (n=944) vaccine against meningococcal infection increased from 79 patients in 2014 to 386 in 2019. The increase of the number of vaccinated people was associated with the implementation of conjugated vaccine (it was the only option in 2018 and 2019). After the use of conjugated vaccine, the local side effects were revealed in 20 (2.1%) out of 944 patients, 5 (0.5°%) of them had both local and general reactions. Meanwhile, all side effects were slight.

Conclusion. Almost 5 times increase of the number of children vaccinated against MI with tetravalent vaccines in the period 2014-2019. Low incidence of side effects, most of which were local and slight, was noted.

The article provides the review of literature on the issue of neurotoxic complications of chemotherapy in children. The data search was carried out in the PubMed, CyberLeninka, RSCI databases and others. There are many works devoted to studying the distribution, structure, and clinical features of chemo-induced neurological disorders in modern literature. In general, analysis of literature has shown that the incidence of neurotoxic complications varies widely depending on the research methods and used chemo-ther-apeutic drugs. Manifestations of chemotherapy-induced neurological disorders are quite diverse and accompanied by the central and peripheral nervous system damage. However, it has been shown that the platinum-based drugs have effective ototoxic effect with the damage of the auditory nerve. The Vincristine often causes peripheral polyneuropathy. Methotrexate and Ifosfamide cause metabolic encephalopathy. Cytarabine’s neurotoxicity is the damage of the cerebellum. The addition of neurological symptoms leads to decrease in the quality of life of patients. Some studies present the results of study of the causes and pathogenetic manifestations of neurotoxic reactions, changes in the genome associated with the development of specific toxic effects are identified. Despite the fact that many pathogenetic mechanisms of chemotherapy-induced neurotoxic complications have been revealed, the significance of laboratory predictors for prognosing and early assessment of these complications has not been essentially established yet, thus, there is the need for further study of this topic.

Recent studies have shown the correlation between stress, immunity and intestinal microbiota. Chronic stress is associated with high production of inflammation mediators and risk of infection development, chronic systemic inflammation and inflammatory diseases development, as well as depressive disorders. Intestinal microbiota produces a wide range of compounds important for the organism: all major neurotransmitters, including serotonin, cytokines, tryptophan and short-chain fatty acids. Serotonin deficiency is considered as significant cause factor for development of anxiety, aggression, affective disorders and stress. Tryptophan is the serotonin precursor. Tryptophan is produced by intestinal microbiota or derived from food can be metabolized into kinurenine. Proinflammatory cytokines activate hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal axis that increases of the level of circulating kinurenine and reduces the serotonin synthesis. Besides that, more kinurenine enters the brain during the inflammation process, and the neurotoxic pathway of kinurenine metabolism overwhelm the neuroprotective one. The less various microbiota microbiota is associated with increased response of the hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal system, increase of pro-inflammatory cytokines, reduction of stress resistance, and depression. Enrichment of the diet with prebiotic components increases the diversity of the intestinal microbiota. Dietary interventions for intestinal microbiome also include probiotics promoting increased body resistance and cause less exposure to depression.