Levels of progesterone, oestradiol and aldosterone in the plasma of twenty women with premenstrual syndrome (PMS) were measured by radioimmunoassay and the results were compared with those from a control series of ten normal volunteers. All the PMS patients were apparently ovulatory but the pooled progesterone values from days --9 to --5 premenstrually were significantly lower than the control values (P less than 0.05). The oestradiol levels in the PMS patients were higher than in control subjects over the last 4 days of the cycle (P less than 0.01). There was no significance in aldosterone levels between the PMS and control groups. The relevance of these results to the aetiology of PMS is considered.

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Potatoes and Spina BifidaAnencephaly and spina bifida (ASB) are important human malformations: four in every 1000 births, including stillbirths, have one or other of these major birth defects in the UK as a whole (0.4 %). In the Western world, spina bifida, though usually more frequent than anencephaly, behaves more or less the same as anencephaly in its epidemiology. Where one is common, the other is common, e.g. in Ireland. Where one is rare, the other is rare, e.g. in London, where it is about five times rarer than in Belfast. When one is common, the other is common, e.g. in winter, and a bad year for one tends to be a bad year for the other. Both afflict the poor more than the wealthy by a factor of about four. Both occur at higher rates in older mothers and among those mothers with more children. The previous birth of an anencephalic leads the mother to have a 500 risk of anencephaly or spina bifida in a later pregnancy; the previous birth of a spina bifida child also leads to a comparable risk of either malformation.For these reasons of similarity, particularly this mutual relationship within sibships, and because both are defects of one or other end of the neural tube, probably in the fourth week of embryonic life, we can treat the two as one condition (ASB), in this country at least. PreventabilityMost of these variables -time, place, class, mother's age and parity -are in principle controllable. An extremely favoured child has a risk over a thousand times smaller than a disfavoured child has, so there is certainly preventability in principle.Two years ago, and until 8.11.73, our hypothesis was that short-term potato avoidance would prevent 95 % of ASB in this country. Apparently, ASB is not so simple and the present position is as follows.The seasonal peak of ASB incidence rates suggests damage particularly in May, as noted by Leck & Record (1966). They later recognized (unpublished) that this is the time of year when the overwintered potatoes are at their worst quality.Then there is the rough regional concordance within countries between the birth incidence rates of ASB and the prevalence of potato blight, a fungal disease of potato. The wet west of the British Isles has a high incidence of both blight and ASB; the dry east has less ofeach. In the USA, the humid east has some blight and some ASB; the dry west has little of either, and the same is true of Canada. It has been doubted whether France and Sweden fit the geographical relationship, but there is no cause for this doubting. Given the unreliability of inferences across international boundaries when there are so many uncontrolled variables (potato varieties, cooking habits, &c.), the low ASB rates are quite reconcilable with a large consumption of potatoes. It is quality that matters rather than quantity. Tuber blight in most of France or Sweden is of low frequency by British standards despite the blighting of the haulms. Culinary pride is perhaps more prevalent there than here and may lead to the more frequent discarding of partly blemished pota...

SUMMARYIn this study, we have attempted to detect and describe patterns in the arrangement of gene loci within chromosomes of a metazoon. Known loci For all these properties, there is little, if any, evidence of clustering between known loei that are not close enough to belong to the same 10-locus group. Our analysis has, however, revealed evidence confirming that some properties show a tendency to cluster within a 10-locus group. Even this tendency is not strong, except for some of the morphological properties.However, it is apparently at variance with the findings of Elston and Glassman (1967), based on fewer data.

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