Problems and prospects of studying hemorrhagic fever with renal syndrome in the Republic of Tatarstan

The paper presents the history of the study of hemorrhagic fever with renal syndrome (HFRS) at the Kazan Research Institute of Epidemiology and Microbiology from the beginning of the 50s to the present. The accumula­ted information allows to draw up general conceptions about the main source of infection, the biological structure of natural foci of infection, nosoarea and the main clinical forms of the disease, the nature and seasonality of the disease, the sex and age composition of patients, and the types of natural foci of HFRS. The stages of improving the methods of laboratory diagnosis of HFRS, development of a specific immunoglobulin against the serum of the Puumala virus are described. A significant contribution to the study of HFRS was the landscape-epidemiological ranking of the territory of the Republic of Tatarstan and the Middle Volga endemic for HFRS, with the identification of zones of special risk of human infection and the main factors that form them. At present, a reference center for monitoring HFRS has been created based on the Kazan Research Institute of Epidemiology and Microbiology, and the study of the properties of HFRS pathogens at the current molecular-genetic level continues.