The Mary Sheridan Centre serves the needs of two health districts with a population of over half a million. The assessment of the handicapped child is combined with a Day Nursery and Observation Unit which provides therapeutic, educational and supportive guidance. During the year May 1973-74, 207 children were referred for assessment of whom only 11 were found to have no handicap. One-third of these referrals were from the hospital follow-up baby clinic and two-thirds came from community and general practitioner sources. The average age of referral was two years for girls and two and a half years for boys. Of the 196 handicapped children, 33 had neurological disorders, 30 congenital anomalies and 50 an adverse perinatal history. Social factors were thought to contribute significantly in 72; 35 children came from single parent families. Behaviour problems were noticed in a high proportion (68). Forty-four children regularly attend the Centre's day nursery whose staff include preschool teacher, occupational therapists and trained nurses for play, speech stimulation and specific therapy; 48 attend for speech therapy and 19 for physiotherapy. The prime aim is to help the parents continue with the therapy and care of their child in their own home.
BRITISH 577 and the others are slow reacting substance in anaphylaxis (S.R.S.-A.) and the kinins. Administration of purified extracts of any one or combination of these three substances will cause bronchospasm in experimental animals. The histamine effect only is antagonized by antihistamines. In 1963 Collier and his colleagues demonstrated that bronchospasm, induced by either kinins or S.R.S.-A., could be completely prevented by the administration of a small dose of aspirin a few minutes before the injection of kinins or S.R.S.-A.' Aspirin seemed, in fact, to be a specific antagonist of kinins and S.R.S.-A., and the logical deduction is that combined therapy with aspirin and antihistamines should be an effective prophylactic for at least some cases of extrinsic asthma. Either substance alone would have only a partial and unpredictable effect, which is in accord with the variable and usually disappointing effect of antihistamines in asthma. There is therefore a sound biochemical background for the effect observed by Professor Clarke, although combined therapy with an antihistamine would be more logical. I am aware of no human trials of combined antihistamine/aspirin therapy, and would also like to make it clear that I am quoting only from sight and memory of the work of original researchers.-I am, etc.,
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