Family, Gender, and Population Policy: Views from the Middle East [Arabic]

This paper explores the relevance of international debates to the realities of the Middle East, an important but understudied region that has often been subject to stereotyping. The region’s wealth of traditions and diverse contemporary experience offer insights to those who venture beyond the surface appearance. This paper provides a broad introduction to the connections between family, gender, and population policy in the Middle East. It is based on studies by a diverse group of Middle East scholars and the discussions they generated in Cairo at an international symposium sponsored by the Population Council in February 1994. The paper was written prior to the historic UN International Conference on Population and Development in Egypt, in the hope both of increasing understanding of an important region of the world and refining our grasp of international issues

IL-15 promotes activation and expansion of CD8+ T cells in HIV-1 infection

In HIV-1–infected patients, increased numbers of circulating CD8(+) T cells are linked to increased risk of morbidity and mortality. Here, we identified a bystander mechanism that promotes CD8 T cell activation and expansion in untreated HIV-1–infected patients. Compared with healthy controls, untreated HIV-1–infected patients have an increased population of proliferating, granzyme B(+), CD8(+) T cells in circulation. Vβ expression and deep sequencing of CDR3 revealed that in untreated HIV-1 infection, cycling memory CD8 T cells possess a broad T cell repertoire that reflects the repertoire of the resting population. This suggests that cycling is driven by bystander activation, rather than specific antigen exposure. Treatment of peripheral blood mononuclear cells with IL-15 induced a cycling, granzyme B(+) phenotype in CD8(+) T cells. Moreover, elevated IL-15 expression in the lymph nodes of untreated HIV-1–infected patients correlated with circulating CD8(+) T cell counts and was normalized in these patients following antiretroviral therapy. Together, these results suggest that IL-15 drives bystander activation of CD8(+) T cells, which predicts disease progression in untreated HIV-1–infected patients and suggests that elevated IL-15 may also drive CD8(+) T cell expansion that is linked to increased morbidity and mortality in treated patients