The European union

Introduction An overview of media markets shows that rapid growth and the integration of some of the most dynamic market segments are characteristics of this fast-moving industry. The main players are the established incumbents upstream and the delivery segments of media downstream. The presence of incumbents, inheritors of previous public monopolies, has led Member States to use regulation in a complementary role with competition. In these markets, strategies to deliver new products and services and to serve new geographic markets focus less on organic growth than on alliances and mergers in order to create multi-media offshoots, bid for control of content rights, increase the diffusion of products and services, and develop technologies for conditional access and transmission standards to capture advantages through proprietary technology. As a result, vertically integrated dominant positions either upstream or downstream have tended to emerge. There is nothing wrong with vertical integration except when there is market power at one stage of the vertical chain. Indeed, as far as the media industry is concerned, there are some specific challenges at the European level. The new EU regulatory framework grants some specific competition principles which can be integrated into ex ante regulation. EU merger control may also prevent potential distortion of competition resulting from the creation or the strengthening of a single or collective dominant position in the media sector at a horizontal level, or from foreclosure effects at a vertical level.

HBHA-specific IFN-{gamma} Synthesis at the Site of Infection during Active Tuberculosis in Humans.

RATIONALE: Tuberculosis (TB) remains a major cause of mortality. A better understanding of the immune responses to mycobacterial antigens may be helpful to develop improved vaccines and diagnostics. OBJECTIVE: The mycobacterial antigen heparin-binding-hemagglutinin (HBHA) induces strong interferon-gamma (IFN-gamma) responses by circulating lymphocytes from Mycobacterium tuberculosis latently infected subjects, and low responses associated with CD4(+) regulatory T (Treg) cells in TB patients. Here, we investigated HBHA-specific IFN-gamma responses at the site of the TB disease. METHODS: Bronchoalveolar lavages, pleural fluids and blood were prospectively collected from 61 patients with a possible diagnosis of pulmonary and/or pleural TB. HBHA-specific IFN-gamma production was analyzed by flow cytometry and ELISA. The suppressive effect of pleural Treg cells was investigated by depletion experiments. MEASUREMENTS AND MAIN RESULTS: The percentages of HBHA-induced IFN-gamma(+) alveolar and pleural lymphocytes were higher for pulmonary (P<0.0001) and for pleural (P<0.01) TB than for non-TB controls. Local CD4(+) and CD8(+) T cells produced the HBHA-specific IFN-gamma. This local secretion was not suppressed by Treg lymphocytes, contrasting with previously reported data on circulating lymphocytes. CONCLUSION: TB patients display differential effector and regulatory T cell responses to HBHA in local and circulating lymphocytes with a predominant effector CD4(+) and CD8(+) response locally, compared to a predominant Treg response among circulating lymphocytes. These findings may be helpful for the design of new vaccines against TB, and the detection of HBHA-specific T cells at the site of the infection may be a promising tool for the rapid diagnosis of active TB.