The immune status of Subarctic residents with different professional backgrounds

Abstract

The complex effect on human body of climatic, geophysical, and ecological factors of the North lead to an extra load on adaptation potential in humans, causing diseases, premature ageing, and lower life expectancy. To employees under rotation schemes, the vast, poorly explored, and difficult-to-access area of the Arctic basin is challenging, as is to undergraduate students of the North who have to meet the demands the northern environment places on their health, physiology and psyche. Students constitute a special social group of the population not only in terms of age or work-life regime, but also in terms of the high, prolonged psychoemotional pressure they are exposed to. In individuals working or residing in extreme conditions (nomadic populations, combat situations, etc.), the intensity of changes in the immune status and hormonal background depends on the severity of occupational milieu. Reindeer herding represents a way of existence in adverse climatic conditions of the Far North.