Objective-To define the range and variability of ambulatory blood pressure in normal schoolchildren. Design-Prospective study. Methods-Resting blood pressure of 1121 schoolchildren from Newcastle upon Tyne was recorded. An ambulatory blood pressure device, which uses both auscultatory (KorotkoV) and oscillometric methods of blood pressure measurement, was then put in place for 24 hours. Results-The day was divided into three time periods: school, home, and night time. Normal centiles for blood pressure for each of these time periods were obtained and many daytime readings were outside reported normal resting levels. The normal variation of blood pressure was quantified by comparing each of these time periods with the resting readings. Resting systolic blood pressure did not predict 24 hour mean systolic blood pressure. Conclusions-The availability of normal ambulatory blood pressure data on the level and variation of blood pressure in children may facilitate the early identification of hypertension in this age group. (Arch Dis Child 1999;80:529-532)

Data from 5,534 prenatal registrants who had blood glucose determinations following the ingestion of 50 gin. of glucose indicated that age is the only maternal factor of significance to resulting blood glucose levels when other variables are held fixed.The lack of a blood glucose-birth weight correlation in the general population was further explored with the demonstration that such a relationship exists among groups of potentially diabetic women.Overweight women giving birth to a large baby were found to have significantly higher mean blood glucose values. The overweight women with an infant of average birth weight or the normal weight women with a large baby had no such blood glucose elevation. These data imply that more accurate separation of either the overweight women or women giving birth to large babies into groups of special significance to future development of diabetes mellitus is possible. DIABETES 15: 466-70, July, 1966.

1 The concentrations of amiodarone/desethylamiodarone, digoxin, flecainide and sotalol were measured in serum collected immediately prior to death and in postmortem blood collected from the femoral vein and artery of an 18-year-old male with congenital heart disease who developed a fatal arrhythmia. 2 The concentrations of all four drugs in the sample col lected during life were consistent with the dosage given and in the range accepted for normal therapy. 3 There were no differences in amiodarone/desethylamio darone, flecainide and sotalol concentrations in arterial or venous postmortem blood. 4 The concentrations of desethylamiodarone, digoxin, fle cainide and sotalol but not amiodarone, were higher in postmortem blood than in antemortem serum. The flecainide concentration was significantly greater than the upper limit associated with toxicity in life. Without knowledge of the true concentration measured in life, this apparently high, toxic concentration would have suggested that death could have resulted from arrhyth mogenic/proarrhythmic effects of the drug in excess. 5 These results further demonstrate the hazards in inter preting postmortem blood concentrations following suspected drug intoxication.

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