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1 Calcium antagonists with long us short elimination half-life may show marked differences in their antihypertensive effect during short interruptions of therapy by missed doses. 2 In the present study we evaluated the blood pressure lowering effect of amlodipine us diltiazem both on active maintenance treatment and after active treatment was interrupted for 2 days by placebo using a double-blind randomized design. After a single blind placebo run-in period, hypertensive patients were randomized to amlodipine 5 mg once daily or diltiazem 90 mg twice daily. After 4-6 weeks, doses were increased to 10mg once daily or 180 mg twice daily, if necessary for control of diastolic blood pressure. During week 9 or 10 on active treatment blisterpacks contained 2 days of placebo. Twenty-four hour blood pressure monitoring was performed at the end of runin period and during week 9 and 10 on active us interrupted therapy. 3 Active therapy by amlodipine (n=20) lowered day systolic blood pressure by 17 f 2 mmHg and diastolic blood pressure by 12+2 mmHg and did not change heart rate. In second day of interrupted therapy most of these responses were still present. Diltiazem (n = 14) lowered day systolic blood pressure by 13 & 2 mmHg, diastolic blood pressure by 11 & 2 mmHg and heart rate by 10 1 2 beats min-'. Most of these responses had disappeared during the second day of interrupted therapy. 4 We conclude that amlodipine and diltiazem are fairly similar in lowering blood pressure from an efficacy point of view. However, during short periods of noncompliance blood pressure control will persist markedly better with the agent with a long us the one with a short elimination half-life.

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Converging investigations on the part of multiple agencies/agents have provided overwhelming evidence for Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. As a part (and consequence) of recent reports, multiple datasets that capture actions taken by actors of the Internet Research Agency (IRA), have been released to the public. In the cur-rent paper, we present and abridged report of several preliminary forensic analyses of Facebook ad data and Twitter troll accounts that were run by the IRA during the election cycle. Through the use of language analysis, we characterize the evolution of IRA content over the course of the election cycle, providing a basis for understanding how left- and right-leaning ideologies were differentially targeted to spread enmity among the American electorate. Additionally, through an analysis of syntactic constructions, we find that the content produced by the IRA on Twitter was linguistically unique from a control sample of English-speaking Twitter accounts. Altogether, our findings suggest that the IRA’s operations were largely unsophisticated and “low-budget” in nature, with no serious attempts at point-of-origin obfuscation being taken.