The Morphological Features Of Immune System During Chronic Drug Addiction

Abstract

The aim at the present study is to find out the features of the morphological changes of the immune system organs in different development stages of chronic drug addiction. For this study used the bodies of 53 individuals (45 men and 8 women) aged between 16 and 41, who were subjected to chronic drug addiction. Thirthy-five of them were forensic and 18 medical (people who die from various acute and chronic, relapsed infectious diseases) autopsy cases. The control group included the bodies of 15 men aged between 16 and 35, who died as a result of mechanical asphyxia. Studied histochemically and immunhistochemically metods on paraffin and selloidin sections. All observations were divided into two groups depending on the term of abusing narcotic substances: 1st group – chronic drug addicts using narcotics for 2 years; 2nd group – chronic drug addicts using narcotics from 2 to 10 years. The morphological changes in the immune system organs were mainly of reactive-hyper-plastic and dystrophic nature and were accompanied by acute micro-circulatory disturbances during the examinations in the 1st group. Necrotic, atrophic and sclerotic (both in parenchyma and interstition) changes along with the abovementioned pathological changes were discovered during the examinations in the 2nd group. This means the development of secondary B- and T-cell type immunodeficiency in patients.

Keywords

• Chronic drug intoxication
• Immune system
• Secondary Immunodeficiency

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