Acute leukaemia in Kenya

Acute leukaemia is not as uncommon in equatorial East Africa as has until recently been believed. The acute myelogenous variety is disproportionately common in children and has an unusually frequent chloromatous presentation. Although the reasons for this are not entirely clear, the effect of environmental factors is considered. The possible inter-relationship of malaria, Burkitt's lymphoma and acute leukaemia remains an enigma. Poor therapeutic results demand greater attention to the problem.

Assessment of the severity of primary depressive illness. Wakefield self-assessment depression inventory

A self-assessment inventory for measuring severity of depressive illness is described, Its chief merits are brevity and simplicity. The correlation with the Hamilton Rating Scale is +0·87. At a cut-off level of 14–15 points 3% of patients and 7·5% of ‘Normals’ are misclassified. The mean scores for male and female patients do not differ significantly and the small positive correlation of score with age is of little practical significance. The limitations in this inventory are discussed but, despite them, it has practical value and merits further development.

Serum folate and vitamin B12 in epileptics with and without mental illness

Considerable interest is at present focused on the possibility of an association between mental illness in epileptics and metabolic abnormalities resulting from the anticonvulsant drugs they have been taking; in fact it has been suggested that these drug-induced abnormalities may be actually causative of the psychiatric disorders. For a good summary of this literature the interested reader is referred to Reynolds (1968).