Canadian Medical Association Journal 1996; 154: 301
Research in genetics in the Slovak Republic has many interesting aspects. The great advantage of our medical system in recent decades was good organization and precise data. The fact that an autopsy was mandatory in every patient who died in a hospital has proven to be important for research. Several rare or even unknown genetic syndromes are suspected to exist only in some parts of Slovakia as a result of restricted population movement owing to geographic and political restraints. However, these syndromes have not been confirmed by genetic methods until now. One of the important tasks of the newly established Centre of Molecular Biology and Genetics in Bratislava is to collect tissue samples from subjects with a family history of these syndromes who have died or undergone surgery. These samples are stored and documented in departments of pathology all over the country. From a genetic standpoint, these tissue samples represent valuable material. They could be analysed in cooperation with western countries, where collecting samples is laborious, ineffective and expensive but where research facilities are excellent. Such cooperation would also be useful in the diagnosis of genetically determined types of cancer, such as breast cancer and nonpolyposis colorectal cancer.
Research in cardiology is also expensive and methodologically demanding. Elaboration of a model of chronic heart failure requires a great amount of labour and a large number of laboratory animals. In recent years both labour and animals were cheap and easily available in the Slovak Republic. As a result, a rabbit model of aortic insufficiency resulting in heart failure was developed at the Department of Pathophysiology in Bratislava. There is a trend toward experiments to test the effectiveness of cardiovascular drugs in improving survival rates. The assessment of mortality among experimental animals with heart failure would represent valuable information without requiring methodologically demanding and expensive investigations.
Some of the specific aspects of our research conditions may be of interest to Canadian researchers, who have greater experience in genetics or cardiology than we do, and could result in scientific cooperation that would prove useful for both countries.
Fedor Simko, MD, PhD
Associate professor
Department of Pathophysiology
Faculty of Medicine
Juraj Simko, MD, PhD
Centre of Genetics
and Molecular Biology
81108 Bratislava
Slovak Republic
fax 427 218-558