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D Shapiro

Publications and source records attributed to D Shapiro.

255 records · Page 15Linked to original sources

The impact of women's employment and education on contraceptive use and abortion in Kinshasa, Zaire.

This report examines contraceptive behavior and abortion among women residing in Kinshasa, Zaire's capital city, with particular emphasis on women's employment and education. A data set collected in 1990 covering 2,399 women of reproductive age was used. While the practice of contraception is a common event in Kinshasa, dominated by the rhythm method, the use of modern contraceptives remains limited, but is on the rise. Induced abortion is reported by 15 percent of the ever-pregnant women in the survey. Women's employment and education are strongly linked to contraceptive use and abortion, and differences in the incidence of abortion by schooling and employment status appear to play an important role in contributing to corresponding observed differences in fertility. Modern contraceptives and induced abortion appear to be used as complementary fertility-control strategies in Kinshasa, and analyses of the findings suggest that better-educated women employed in the modern sector are most likely to be in the forefront of the contraceptive revolution.

Abortion, Induced↗

Generation of nitric oxide and clearance of interferon-gamma after BCG infection are impaired in mice that lack the interferon-gamma receptor.

Mice with a targeted deletion of either the interferon (IFN)-gamma gene or the IFN-gamma receptor gene (IFN-gamma R(0/0) mice) fail to survive infection with the Bacillus Calmette-Guerin (BCG) strain of Mycobacterium bovis. Here we show that resident peritoneal macrophages isolated 2 weeks after BCG infection from IFN-gamma R(0/0) mice produced significantly less nitric oxide (NO) than wild-type macrophages. However, the response to lipopolysaccharide (LPS) was not completely abrogated in the IFN-gamma R(0/0) macrophages. BCG infection of wild-type mice led to a marked increase in their urinary nitrite/nitrate levels, as previously described. This increase in urinary nitrite/nitrate was not detected in BCG- infected IFN-gamma R(0/0) mice, indicating that no other cytokine can replace IFN-gamma as a mediator of increased NO synthesis after BCG infection in the intact organism. A comparison of circulating levels of IFN-gamma in BCG-infected animals revealed that sera from IFN-gamma R(0/0) mice contained up to 66-fold more IFN-gamma than sera from identically treated wild-type mice. To determine if the higher levels of circulating IFN-gamma were due to increased IFN-gamma synthesis, we compared the amounts of IFN-gamma mRNA present in the spleens of BCG-infected wild-type and IFN-gamma R(0/0) mice. No increase in IFN-gamma mRNA levels was detected in the spleens from IFN-gamma R(0/0) mice. Since the generation of IFN-gamma protein in cultured spleen cells was also not increased in IFN-gamma R(0/0) mice, we conclude that clearance of IFN-gamma from the circulation is impaired in IFN-gamma R(0/0) mice, thus revealing a heretofore unrecognized important role for the IFN-gamma receptor in the regulation of IFN-gamma levels in the intact organism.

Animals↗