Browsing by Subject "African"

Now showing 1 - 2 of 2
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    Current Definition of Vitamin D Status Misclassifies Maladapted Children of First Generation African Immigrants to the Northern US
    (2017-06) Hamdoun, Elwaseila
    Skin pigmentation, vitamin D inactivation and genetic variation of vitamin D binding protein (DBP) are all essential mechanisms for adaptive vitamin D metabolism in African children living near the equator. The widely used measurement of total serum 25-hydroxyvitamin D (25OHD) test ignores their inherent differences and maladaptive vitamin D metabolism, and potentially misclassifies their vitamin D status in northern parts of the United States. The goal of this multi-center international cross-sectional observational study was to better define vitamin D status in Somali immigrants living in the northern US. Well children aged 6 months to 7 years from Minnesota (US-born of Somali descent, n=55) and in Uganda (n=95) were enrolled. 25OHD and other vitamin D metabolites (24,25(OH)2D) were measured by immune-affinity extraction and liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry. Parathyroid hormone (PTH) and hypocalcemia status were used as indicators of insufficiency. DBP haplotypes were determined. Ninety-one percent of the Minnesota Somali participants had 25OHD levels <30 ng/mL (vs 48% in Ugandans). Compared to the Ugandan group, and despite better nutritional status (milk intake), MN Somali children had lower 25OHD (23.7 ng/mL vs 30.1; p<0.0001) and calcium levels (9.1 mg/dL vs 9.5; p<0.0001), and higher PTH levels (47 pg/mL vs 36; p<0.0001). Somalis had a significantly higher frequency (57% vs 14% in Ugandans; p<0.001) of calcium in the lower level of normal even at 25OHD levels > 20 (American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) cutoff for sufficiency). This was not significantly different from the Somali group with 25OHD < 20 (p<0.3). The high affinity allele Gc1f was the predominant DBP variant in both Somalis and Ugandans, yet MN Somalis had a higher percentage of low serum calcium status. The Somali group had significantly higher levels of vitamin D inactivation (higher 24,25(OH)2D) despite having lower 25OHD levels, raising a concern of maladaptive vitamin D metabolism and inherent susceptibility to vitamin D deficiency independent of limited cutaneous vitamin D synthesis as a result of darker skin tone. These results suggest that 25OHD levels 20-30 ng/mL (above the AAP cutoff for sufficiency (>20 ng/mL)) are common in children of Somali descent in northern US, and are clinically significant. Also, while African children living near the equator possess adaptive mechanisms for acquisition and utilization of vitamin D, those same mechanisms could render them susceptible to insufficiency when migrating to high latitude regions such as the northern US.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    Nouvelles dramaturgies africaines francophones du chaos
    (2014-12) Ngilla, Sylvie Ndome
    A new type of African Francophone theater has emerged since the 1990s, which announced a breaking point within the African literary landscape. This generation of contemporary writers from the African diaspora engages with notions of fragmentation, displacement, and instability that suggest a reconfiguration of chaos in Francophone African literary production since the Independences. The history of African literatures since 1960, when a large majority of former African colonies became independent, is marked by the theme of chaos with significant differences. Indeed, between 1960 and 1970, writers of the « disenchantment » denounce social and political chaos in Africa following the emergence of new dictatorships in the post-independence period. African theatrical aesthetics by the end of the 1970s and through the 1980s, on the contrary, work on an exit out of the African chaos from the perspective of revalorization, providing modern contextualizations for African myths and traditions. Since the early 1990s a rupture is established within new African theater that creates a performative space of « chaos-monde », which manifests the hybrid reality of the African diaspora at local and global levels. By reading across theatrical works by this generation that include Caya Makélé (Congo), Koffi Kwahulé (Ivory Coast), Marcel Zang (Cameroon), José Pliya (Benin), Kossi Efoui (Togo), and Dieudonné Niangouna (Congo), I shed light on the new techniques and aesthetics of an energetic chaos. A close examination of these new settings of chaos allows for a better understanding of the diasporic nature and transnational perspective from contemporary African theater.