[Comprehensive medical and ecological studies in Pryel'brussi]

Research works in high-mountainous areas of Caucasus and, in particular, in Prielbrusie was initiated by N.N. Sirotinin as far back as in 1929. From the beginning the works were done in expeditionary conditions, from 1973--in further organized permanent Elbrus medical and biological station (EMBS). At the present time EMBS is a component of International Center for astronomical, medical and ecological research that was reorganized in 1999. EMBS is a unique scientific subdivision that has no analogues, it is located on different heights of Elbrus Mountain and complex fundamental scientific problems may be solved here using contemporary scientific methods. EMBS includes two-floor laboratory building, thermobaro-chamber, and the center organized for the recovery of patients from ecologically unfavorable regions and increasing of the sportsmen work capacity. Today the new stage of the EMBS activity starts and therefore there is a time to summarize some results of the research works here. Such results of EMBS activity are the fundamental studies in the field of oxygen insufficiency, which reveal the destructive and constructive mechanisms of the hypoxic state development in organisms. Such investigations became the base for the implementation for the first time in the world of the new highly effective methods of hypoxytherapy aimed on the patient treatment, prophylaxis, resistance increasing and improvement of athletic results for the sportsmen. There were suggested and proved the concept of step-by-step adaptation to hypoxia. Hypoxic states developed under the extreme condition influences as well as during different diseases here were studied comprehensively on the different organism levels. The methods of mathematic simulation of hypoxic states with prediction of organism states were elaborated at EMBS too. All these works transformed hypoxia studies from the descriptive-experimental science in exact one.