The Dalit I Define: Social Media and Individualized Activism in Subaltern Spheres

This paper discusses an explorative study of emerging Dalit activism in online realms. It is the aim of this study to provide empirical content to debates that link the advance of social media to shifts in citizenship and the manifestation of democracy. It seeks to unravel the complexity and hybrid appearance of online activism in practice by focussing on underexplored subaltern spheres. After some contextualizing reflections concerning literature on Dalit media and online political participation, it assesses attempts of prominent Dalit bloggers to employ social media in their battle for justice, representation and socio-economic mobility. Contributing to current debates on collective (and connective) action and ‘new’ or personalized politics – especially since Web 2.0 – the article stresses the importance of embracing a broad conceptualization of online political practice and the need to explore such practice as part of contemporary projects of self. It is argued that, in order to explore the dynamics of personalized politics within marginalized communities, one needs to assess the way in which the intertwinement of these individual projects of self and the collective emancipatory project appear in online social networking strategies of digital activists. As such, the analysis adds to the understanding of every day activism at grassroots level in the age of the Internet. Available at: https://aisel.aisnet.org/pajais/vol7/iss4/3

Initial presenting manifestations in 16,486 patients with inborn errors of immunity include infections and noninfectious manifestations

Background: Inborn errors of immunity (IEI) are rare diseases, which makes diagnosis a challenge. A better description of the initial presenting manifestations should improve awareness and avoid diagnostic delay. Although increased infection susceptibility is a well-known initial IEI manifestation, less is known about the frequency of other presenting manifestations. Objective: We sought to analyze age-related initial presenting manifestations of IEI including different IEI disease cohorts. Methods: We analyzed data on 16,486 patients of the European Society for Immunodeficiencies Registry. Patients with autoinflammatory diseases were excluded because of the limited number registered. Results: Overall, 68% of patients initially presented with infections only, 9% with immune dysregulation only, and 9% with a combination of both. Syndromic features were the presenting feature in 12%, 4% had laboratory abnormalities only, 1.5% were diagnosed because of family history only, and 0.8% presented with malignancy. Two-third of patients with IEI presented before the age of 6 years, but a quarter of patients developed initial symptoms only as adults. Immune dysregulation was most frequently recognized as an initial IEI manifestation between age 6 and 25 years, with male predominance until age 10 years, shifting to female predominance after age 40 years. Infections were most prevalent as a first manifestation in patients presenting after age 30 years. Conclusions: An exclusive focus on infection-centered warning signs would have missed around 25% of patients with IEI who initially present with other manifestations. (J Allergy Clin Immunol 2021;148:1332-41.

A highly virulent variant of HIV-1 circulating in the Netherlands

We discovered a highly virulent variant of subtype-B HIV-1 in the Netherlands. One hundred nine individuals with this variant had a 0.54 to 0.74 log10 increase (i.e., a ~3.5-fold to 5.5-fold increase) in viral load compared with, and exhibited CD4 cell decline twice as fast as, 6604 individuals with other subtype-B strains. Without treatment, advanced HIV-CD4 cell counts below 350 cells per cubic millimeter, with long-term clinical consequences-is expected to be reached, on average, 9 months after diagnosis for individuals in their thirties with this variant. Age, sex, suspected mode of transmission, and place of birth for the aforementioned 109 individuals were typical for HIV-positive people in the Netherlands, which suggests that the increased virulence is attributable to the viral strain. Genetic sequence analysis suggests that this variant arose in the 1990s from de novo mutation, not recombination, with increased transmissibility and an unfamiliar molecular mechanism of virulence