Human malarial disease: a consequence of inflammatory cytokine release

Malaria causes an acute systemic human disease that bears many similarities, both clinically and mechanistically, to those caused by bacteria, rickettsia, and viruses. Over the past few decades, a literature has emerged that argues for most of the pathology seen in all of these infectious diseases being explained by activation of the inflammatory system, with the balance between the pro and anti-inflammatory cytokines being tipped towards the onset of systemic inflammation. Although not often expressed in energy terms, there is, when reduced to biochemical essentials, wide agreement that infection with falciparum malaria is often fatal because mitochondria are unable to generate enough ATP to maintain normal cellular function. Most, however, would contend that this largely occurs because sequestered parasitized red cells prevent sufficient oxygen getting to where it is needed. This review considers the evidence that an equally or more important way ATP deficency arises in malaria, as well as these other infectious diseases, is an inability of mitochondria, through the effects of inflammatory cytokines on their function, to utilise available oxygen. This activity of these cytokines, plus their capacity to control the pathways through which oxygen supply to mitochondria are restricted (particularly through directing sequestration and driving anaemia), combine to make falciparum malaria primarily an inflammatory cytokine-driven disease

Weibo communication and government legitimacy in China: a computer-assisted analysis of Weibo messages on two ‘mass incidents’ †

This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Information, Communication & Society on 03 Oct 2013, available online: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/1369118X.2013.839730This article examines whether and to what extent online communication challenges the legitimacy of the authoritarian Chinese government through an analysis of data from Sina’s Weibo (China’s version of Twitter) about the 2011 Wukan and Haimen mass incidents, collected from December 2011-June 2012. The activities of Weibo users and the discourse of tweets they have posted are examined and the extent to which online communication on Weibo challenges government legitimacy is assessed