Genetics of Host Response to Leishmania tropica in Mice – Different Control of Skin Pathology, Chemokine Reaction, and Invasion into Spleen and Liver

Several hundred million people are exposed to the risk of leishmaniasis, a disease caused by intracellular protozoan parasites of several Leishmania species and transmitted by phlebotomine sand flies. In humans, L. tropica causes cutaneous form of leishmaniasis with painful and long-persisting lesions in the site of the insect bite, but the parasites can also penetrate to internal organs. The relationship between the host genes and development of the disease was demonstrated for numerous infectious diseases. However, the search for susceptibility genes in the human population could be a difficult task. In such cases, animal models may help to discover the role of different genes in interactions between the parasite and the host. Unfortunately, the literature contains only a few publications about the use of animals for L. tropica studies. Here, we report an animal model suitable for genetic, pathological and drug studies in L. tropica infection. We show how the host genotype influences different disease symptoms: skin lesions, parasite dissemination to the lymph nodes, spleen and liver, and increase of levels of chemokines CCL2, CCL3 and CCL5 in serum

The struggle for social constructivism in postsocialist Central and Eastern Europe

This paper argues that some of the difficulties faced by gender equality in postsocialist Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) can be explained by a missing paradigmatic shift to a constructivist understanding of gender. Arguably the most explicit rejection of a constructivist gender perspective was recently served by the Bulgarian Constitutional Court’s judgment, closely analyzed in the paper, which found certain provisions of the Council of Europe Convention on preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence (Istanbul Convention) incompatible with the Bulgarian Constitution. A constructivist analysis of gender-based violence is capable of offering a range of important contextual insights into gender-based violence, whereas those who only have biology in their analytical arsenal are more limited (for example, sexual predation is thus either an “innate” male sexual drive or a psychologically certifiable deviance). The Bulgarian Constitutional Court, as the paper shows, does not even get as far as debating the insights gender analysis offers, but rather rejects them wholesale merely because the term “gender” is used. While a constructivist, critical (feminist) understanding of gender is under attack globally, this paper shows that the assault is particularly grave in at least certain postsocialist CEE countries, where it is not a mere backlash against a reasonably well-established viewpoint, but a fierce ex ante rejection of a concept not yet understood or debated