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Determination of the structural-functional significance of astrocytes in the physiology and pathology of the CNS is an actual problem of modern neuroscience and clinical neurology. Astrocytes are glial cells of the brain, constitute the substance of the brain, support neurons and separate them with their bodies into compartments. They participate in the immune response of the brain, they are able to maintain the chronic inflammation and progressive neurodegeneration due to overexpression of cytokines, growth factors, and chemokines. This review discusses the key features of astrogliosis as complex of molecular, cellular and functional changes of astrocytes in the response to various brain injuries. Reactive astrogliosis is critical for regeneration and remodeling of neural networks after the injury and ischemia and can have both positive and negative impact. The overexpression of S100b protein is an index of the astrocyte activation, which is characteristic for glial cells as this protein is located mainly in astrocytes. In cerebral ischemia, traumatic brain injury or neurodegenerative diseases there is the modulation of astrogliosis, aimed at the provision of repair mechanisms of the damaged parts of the brain that determines search capabilities of the new means of pharmacological correction of activated astrocytes and other glial components for the treatment of neurological diseases.

According to the modern statistics, the isolated atherosclerotic lesion in one arterial region occurs twice less often, than the combined lesion in several regions. Among the last, significant stenoses (>50 %) make up to 25 % of cases. Vascular surgeons need high-informative and noninvasive diagnostic methods for detection of way of surgical treatment of these lesions. So far the X-ray contrast angiography (AG) remains a method of «the gold standard» whereas the screening part is assigned to the duplex scanning (DS). The aim of present study was to compare results of ultrasonic DS and angiography in patients with multifocal atherosclerosis. Sensitivity and specificity of these methods had been evaluated. By means of screening of 565 men of 45-59-years-old, 64 patients with multifocal atherosclerotic lesions in coronary, carotid and low extremity arteries were identified. They were examined using DS and AG. The degree of carotid stenosis was accurately measured both by means of ultrasonic duplex scanning and angiography. Sensitivity and specificity of DS were 86 and 71 %, sensitivity of AG was 97 %, specificity was 86 %. Furthermore duplex scanning provided more information in detecting of unstable plaques compared with angiography. Thus ultrasound diagnostic may be considered a useful method for detecting different characteristics of multifocal atherosclerotic lesion, including the preoperative noninvasive assessment.

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