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EDITORIAL SYNOPSIS The authors describe the results of a study of the gastric secretion and gastric histology of 15 control subjects and 30 patients with tropical sprue. Patients with sprue show a marked depression of gastric secretion and varying degrees of gastritis as compared with control subjects. There is no relation between the severity of the gastric lesion and the severity of the intestinal lesion. The possible aetiology of the gastritis is discussed.

MEDICA.L JOURNA~L origin and symptomless unless they become accidentally infected or very large. Symptoms arising in a previously quiescent diverticulum as a result of infection due to trauma, either from catheterization or the passage of the foetal head, would explain the high incidence of parous women in the series so far recorded. Urethral diverticula, while apparently not so common in Great Britain as in some parts of the United States of America and the West Indies, are by no means very rare. I have personally encountered two in London in the past four years, and Mr. Geoffrey Dixon has recently drawn my attention to a third example which, like Dr. Phillips's case, contained calculi. It is likely that if looked for carefully by British gynaecologists and urologists urethral diverticula would be found more often. This has certainly been the case elsewhere.-I am, etc.,

Antimalarial drug combination therapy is now being widely used for the treatment of uncomplicated malaria. The objective of the present study was to investigate the effects of coadministration of intramuscular α/β-arteether (α/β-AE) and oral sulfadoxine-pyrimethamine (SP) on the pharmacokinetic properties of each drug as a drug-drug interaction study to support the development of a fixed-dose combination therapy. A single-dose, open-label, crossover clinical trial was conducted in healthy adult Indian male volunteers (18 to 45 years, = 13) who received a single dose of AE or SP or a combination dose of AE and SP. Blood samples were collected up to 21 days postadministration, and concentrations of α-AE, β-AE, sulfadoxine, and pyrimethamine were determined by using a validated liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry method. Pharmacokinetic parameters were calculated and statistically analyzed to calculate the geometric mean ratio and confidence interval. Following single-dose coadministration of intramuscular AE and oral SP, the pharmacokinetic properties of α/β-AE were not significantly affected, and α/β-AE had no significant effect on the pharmacokinetic properties of SP in these selected groups of healthy volunteers. However, more investigations are needed to explore this further. (This study has been registered in the clinical trial registry of India under approval no. CTRI/2011/11/002155.).

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