A subacute parkinsonian syndrome was seen in three patients with CT evidence of basal ganglia infarcts. The clinical picture improved spontaneously, making the diagnosis of idiopathic Parkinson's disease untenable, and other causes of parkinsonism were not detected. This extrapyramidal syndrome was therefore compatible with "vascular parkinsonism," even though it lacked features often ascribed to this syndrome, such as a history of previous strokes and the presence of dementia and corticospinal tract signs.

In order to investigate the possible association between Brazilian pemphigus foliaceus and HLA, we studied 48 patients and 74 matched controls, all Brazilian Caucasoids, for HLA-A,B,C; DR1 to DRw8 and DQw1 to DQw3. The frequencies of DR1, DR4 and B16 were significantly increased, while DR7 was significantly decreased among the patients. Furthermore DQw2, likewise the DR specificities associated with it - DR3 and DR7 - never occurred among the patients in the absence of the susceptibility markers DR1, DQw1 or DR4, DQw3. Acting on these findings, we suggest that at least two MHC-class II genes are involved in the pathogenesis of Brazilian pemphigus foliaceus: at least one gene, associated to DR1,DQw1 and to DR4,DQw3, confers susceptibility and at least one gene, associated to DR7,DQw2 and DR3,DQw2, confers resistance. The susceptibility gene(s) seem(s) to be epistatic to or dominant over (if allelic) the resistance gene(s). Both are dominant over other alleles at their locus (or loci).

Seventy-seven alcoholic patients, 54 men and 23 women, had cirrhosis of the liver when they first attended the Alcoholism Clinic at St Vincent 's Hospital, Melbourne, between July, 1964, and June, 1968. During this period Soo chronic alcoholics, 663 men and 137 women, attended the clinic. Cirrhosis was thus diagnosed twice as often in women as in men.The case histories of the 77 cirrhotic patients were reviewed, and information was collected about socio-economic status and drinking habits. This information was compared with that obtained from a sample of 220 patients--all those who attended the Alcoholism Clinic between July, 1966, and June, 1967. Most of the cirrhotic patients were beer drinkers, as are the majority of Australian alcoholics. Relatively more cirrhotics were habitual excessive drinkers. The cirrhotic patients did not drink more heavily, but they had drunk excessively for longer when their cirrhosis was diagnosed. Cirrhotic women, however, had drunk excessively for a significantly shorter time than cirrhotic men.No difference was found in the incidence of either social isolation or clinical peripheral neuropathy between cirrhotic and alcoholic patients, or between male and female cirrhotics. Cirrhosis was not commoner among the lower socio-economic groups. These findings were interpreted as suggesting that nutrition did not play an important part in the causation of the liver disease.

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