The definitive diagnosis of coeliac disease is based on typical changes in the small intestine biopsy specimens. To screen individuals for coeliac disease serum IgA and IgG antigliadin (AGA), IgA antireticulin (ARA) and IgA antiendomysium (EmA) antibodies are used. The aim of this study was to investigate whether these antibodies can also be detected in saliva as diagnostic markers of coeliac disease. The study population comprised 30 patients with coeliac disease treated with a gluten-free diet, 14 patients with untreated coeliac disease and 13 healthy control subjects. Sera and saliva were tested simultaneously for the presence of IgA and IgG AGA and IgA EmA. None of patients studied had a selective IgA deficiency. There was no significant difference in salivary IgA AGA levels between the three groups tested and there was no correlation between the individual serum and salivary values of IgA AGA. Salivary IgG AGA levels were very low or undetectable. Serum IgA AGA showed a low sensitivity (36.4%) to detect an untreated patient with coeliac disease. All salivary samples, regardless of the study group were negative for IgA EmA. Serum IgA EmAs were universally detected in the sera of patients with newly diagnosed coeliac disease and also in the sera of five of 30 patients with treated coeliac disease. No IgA EmA was detected in the sera of controls. None of the patients studied had a selective IgA deficiency either. Serum IgA EmA is the most sensitive, and IgA and IgG AGA are good indicators for coeliac disease, but salivary IgA or IgG AGA and salivary IgA EmA are not helpful for the diagnosis or follow-up of coeliac disease patients.

Literary texts convey the complexities of the urban experience in a tangible way. While there is a wide body of work on literary representations of Paris, the role of public transport as part of the (postcolonial) urban experience has not received much attention. This article sets out to analyse the meanings of the mobile public space comprising the Paris Metro in Francophone African and Afrodiasporic literary texts from the mid-20th century to the 2010s. The reading demonstrates how the texts represent the public space of the Metro as a symbol of modernity, a space of disappointment and alienation, an embodiment of social inequalities and as a site of convivial encounters and claims of agency. Through this analysis, the article highlights the role of literature in elucidating the intertwinement of mobility, public space and postcolonial urbanity.

(2013) is a travelogue in which the Los Angeles-based star author returns to his native Congo-Brazzaville after twenty-three years of absence. As typical for postcolonial travel writing, Mabanckou's text foregrounds the traveller's identity dilemmas. The "homecoming" is marked by a sense of unease. Firstly, this unease manifests itself thematically in how the text negotiates the traveller's identity along the native versus tourist axis, and in the oscillation between nostalgia and loss. Secondly, unease marks the representation of the "homecoming" as witnessed by the text's attempts to destabilise the centrality of the travelling I/eye and the confinement of the white female photographer to the narrative's margins. These elements betray the author-narrator's struggle to claim that he belongs to the present tense of his childhood city, the tensions his socioeconomic privilege generate, and the complexities relating to the narrator's centrality and authorship with regards to a literary genre that is marked by its white/colonial roots. In this sense, Lumières de Pointe-Noire addresses issues that are relevant to postcolonial travel writing on a more general scale.

Sub-Saharan African aspiring migrants, pursuing their clandestine odysseys through the Sahara towards the Mediterranean, seem far removed from the figure of the upwardly mobile migrant paradigmatized by postcolonial theory. The attempt to migrate illegally represents a very precarious and time-consuming form of mobility where the itinerary is subject to continuous revision, and reaching the destination is never obvious. The present article analyzes Sefi Atta's short story "Twilight Trek" (2009) and the third part of Marie NDiaye's triptych Trois femmes puissantes (2010) and their representations of these vulnerable African odysseys in which the climax of the migratory endeavor, arrival in Europe, remains out of the protagonists' reach. By focusing on tropes pertaining to identity, mobility, slavery, and storytelling, this article draws attention to the manner in which the text corpus conveys the idea of the precariousness of the arrested migratory endeavor and the limits set to the mobile position of the underprivileged travelers. From the European anti-immigration perspective, the mediatized images of African illegal migrants crammed onto rickety boats on the Mediterranean or crossing the fences in the Spanish enclaves embody the idea of how some forms of mobility become defined as "threatening, transgressive, and abject" (Creswell 178) in globalized postcoloniality. The faceless and nameless masses of aspiring African migrants, "mute objects of a feared alterity" (Chambers 10), are seen as unwanted invaders, a threat to Europe's cultural, social and economic integrity. They do not seem to be linked to Europe anyhow, despite the fact that the two continents' histories are profoundly entangled in terms of slave trade, colonialism and development aid (see Olaussen ix). Nor are the geographic boundaries of the two continents particularly evident either, as the case of the Spanish enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla in Morocco suggests: such places are concrete examples of "Africa in Europe and Europe in Africa" (Thomas, Africa 163; emphasis original). Yet, the frontier represented by the Mediterranean has become a "materialization of authority" that wishes to freeze the two continents' entanglement and the diversity it has generated "into quarantined realms" (Chambers 3, 6). Indeed, as not only individual nations but also the European Union as a whole has taken concrete measures to regulate and control mobility on its (fluid) borders, the concept of "fortress Europe" has become particularly pertinent in recent years (see Thomas, "Fortress") 1. If Fortress Europe perceives contemporary boat people as a threat, liberal and humanitarian discourses, on the other hand, see them in a very different light: they wish to restore the humanity of the aspiring immigrants (Zembylas 31). This implies that the clandestine travelers are seen mainly as victims to be pitied. Shifting perspective, the meaning of the mediatized images of clandestine travelers changes. When these images are exposed to the gaze of those who nurture hopes of e...