The future role of Tokyo's financial market

The Japanese economy has already started a sound movement toward a positive restructuring by means of expanding domestic markets. Careful policy coordination is needed. If the United States fails to seriously address the issue of readjusting its twin deficits in order to put its economy on a healthy path, uneasiness may erode confidence in the dollar and also undermine the future role of the Tokyo financial markets, hindering their function as a stable supply base of funds. The U.S. financial market now depends on Japan for one-third of all long term funds flowing in from overseas. The future role of Tokyo depends on a healthy management of the U.S. economic policy

The Role of Viral Load in the Pathogenesis of HIV-2 Infection in West Africa

The role of Human Immunodeficiency Virus type 2 (HTV-2) viral load has been studied in West Africa in order to understand how this infection differs from HIV-1 and why the majority of HIV-2 infected individuals live for long. Using a polymerase chain reaction (PCR) based-assay, it was found that the level of HIV-2 provirus was surprisingly high in HTV-2 seropositive people who live long without sign of immunosuppression; in contrast the rate of HIV-2 replication reflected by RNA viral load was found low. However, HIV-2 replicates to a high titre in some HIV-2-infected people whose disease progresses rapidly to death. Longitudinal follow-up demonstrated that baseline HIV-2 RNA viral load predicts the rate of CD4+ T cell decline and death but the level of proviruses is a less sensitive predictor. Cytotoxic T-lymphocyte activity (CTL) against HIV-2 structural proteins, especially Gag, was found in most HIV-2 infected people and was inversely correlated with HIV-2 proviral load. Strong CTL activity was consistently found in people who did not have progressive disease, suggesting that CTL play an important role in controlling HIV-2 replication. Co-infection with human T-lymphotropic virus type I (HTLV-I) occurred frequently in HIV-2-infected people in a village in Guinea-Bissau but did not seem to enhance HIV-2 viral load. However an increase in HIV-2 viral load was found in an HIV-2-infected individual with malaria parasitaemia, suggesting that malaria infection enhances HIV-2 viral load. The majority of people who are dually seroreactive for both HIV-1 and HIV-2 arc infected with both viruses but some subjects are dually seroreactive because antibodies against one type cross-react with the other type of HIV. These cross-reactive antibodies may be distinguished by antibody dilution analysis. Other dually seroreactive people harbour an undetectable level of HIV-2 provirus and HIV-2 proviral load tended to be low in advanced disease while HIV-1 proviral load was high