The specific and sensitive definitions of disease bracket the true values; the relatively small range indicates that the current study provides good estimations of incidence and prevalence of Parkinson's disease for recent years in France.

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We evaluated the pharmacokinetics of pirarubicin during 16 courses of therapy in 4 patients suffering from breast cancer who were treated with an association of pirarubicin (30-60 mg/m2 according to the hematologic tolerance to the previous course, the first course being given at a dose of 40 mg/m2) and continuous infusions of 5-fluorouracil (750 mg/m2 daily for 5 days). Pirarubicin's pharmacokinetics and metabolism were linear within this dose range; the metabolites identified were pirarubicinol, doxorubicin and doxorubicinol (AUC ratios of metabolite/pirarubicin were 0.6, 0.64 and 0.57 respectively). Pirarubicin's decay from plasma followed a two-compartmental pattern, showing half-lives of 15.6 min and 16.6 h; the total plasma clearance of the drug was 140 l/h-1/m-2, and the total volume of distribution was 2,830 l/m2. A relationship was observed between some pharmacokinetic parameters and the toxic effects of the drug: the percentage of survival of granulocytes was significantly correlated with the AUC values for doxorubicin and doxorubicinol, whereas that of platelets was significantly correlated with the AUC values for pirarubicin and pirarubicinol. This is the first study to demonstrate a pharmacokinetic/pharmacodynamic relationship for pirarubicin.

A controlled clinical trial was conducted during the winter 1985-1986 with 182 patients with chronic bronchitis living in institutions to evaluate the effectiveness of 'Gouttes aux Essences' (Essence Drops), a well known mixture in aromatherapy to prevent supeneniag bronchial hfectioos. Although the overall number of supervening infections and their characteristics were not modified by the treatment, the frequency of relapse at least appears to have been significantly lowered in the group receiving treatment compared to the group receiving placebo.