Features of age-related changes in the skin in people living near uranium tailings in mountains

Abstract

The work touches upon the issue of long-term influence (more than 50 years) of low doses of ra-diation on the condition of the skin. The role of long-term incoming radionuclides into the internal environment of the body on the development of age-related changes in the skin in people living near uranium tailings in mountainous conditions has been studied. 355 indigenous people of Kyrgyzstan were examined. Of these, 62 (17.5%) people were withdrawn from the study according to the exclusion criteria. The sample consisted of 293 people. The main group consisted of 75 people, including 45 (60%) women and 30 (40%) men, mean age 38.7+/-14.7 (95% CI 35.3-42.1) years. The control group consisted of 218 people, of which 99 (45.4%) were men and 119 (54.6%) were women. Age range from 17 to 77 years. Clinical studies were carried out according to the generally accepted methodology. Differential diagnosis of skin neoplasms was carried out using a Heine Delta 20 dermatoscope (K-256.27.376, Heine Optotechnik, Germany). Statistical analysis was performed using PASW Statistics 21.0 (SPSS Inc., IBM, Chicago, USA). To assess the effect of a risk factor, the attributable risk, risk ratio, and potential harm index (NNT) were cal-culated, and a 95% confidence interval was calculated for each variable. Statistical analysis of clinical and epidemiological data made it possible to identify a number of geriatric signs to as-sess the influence of a risk factor on age-related changes in the skin. The additional risk of age-related skin changes varies from 37+/-2.82% (95% CI 31.5-42.5%) to 63.2+/-2.81 (95% CI 57.7-68.7 %) compared with the control group. The degree of sensitivity of geriatric stigmas to the risk factor is different. At the same time, the relative contribution of the risk factor can be assessed by the severity of the frequency of occurrence of geriatric signs in people living in the zone of radioac-tive waste disposal in comparison with residents of conditionally "clean" living areas.