Blood pressure in childhood: pooled findings of six European studies.

In an attempt to study and prevent the development of hypertension, there is a growing interest in measuring blood pressure in children. The aim of this is to detect and monitor those with a relatively high level of blood pressure. Until now, reference values on blood pressure in children are based on data from North-American youngsters. The present study provides percentile charts based on pooled data from studies on blood pressure conducted in six North-West European countries among 28,043 children. These blood pressure centiles are presented as age-, height- and gender-specific. Brief guidelines for blood pressure measurements in childhood and for detection of children with a relatively high blood pressure are included.

[Spontaneous and induced fetal movement activity in the 2d trimester of pregnancy]. / Spontánní a indukovaná pohybová aktivita plodu ve 2. triemestru tehotenství.

During routine screening in the first half of pregnancy the authors evaluated in 3446 foetuses the incidence of spontaneous movements and movements after their attempted induction by movement of the uterus, when no spontaneous movements were recorded during examination. The examinations were made by means of a rotation probe 3.5 MHz of a Sonoline 2 apparatus (Siemens) always between 7.30 and 11.30 a.m. It was revealed that: 1. Spontaneous motor activity of the foetus depends significantly ot the foetal age; during the period between the 12th and 16th week it was recorded in 94.4%, in the 17th to 21st week it declines to 87.4% and during the 22nd-25th week it rises again to 94.7%. 2. The number of foetuses where movements were recorded after the first movement of the uterus depends also significantly on foetal age: in the 12th-16th week it is 57.5% of the number of foetuses without spontaneous movement, in the 17th to 21st week 66.3% and in the 22nd to 25th week 66.7%. 3. On the basis of preliminary work it is not possible to decide whether the movements observed after movement of the uterus are spontaneous or induced, however, if attempts to induce movements would imply only prolonged examination and recording of spontaneous activity, it is justified. 4. In one foetus where we did not observe spontaneous activity nor movements after movement of the uterus we revealed during a check-up examination rapidly developing polycystic kidneys. 5. Observation of foetal movements during screening is not time consuming and should become a matter of routine.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)

[Attitudes of women and men toward condoms]. / Postoje zen a muzu ke kondomu.

The authors used a ten-item test of attitudes to condoms for enquiries among 200 patients (100 women and 100 men). The attitudes of women were more frequently negative (22.5%) than the attitudes of men (16%). Women also replied less frequently in a positive way to questions of the test than men (42% as compared with 48.5%). Seventy-two respondents (30 women and 42 men) had no experience with condoms, 92 had a single experience (50 women and 42 men) and only 36 respondents (20 women and 16 men) used at least occasionally condoms frequently. Greater experience with condoms increases the positive evaluation of this contraceptive.

Patterns of physical activity among German adolescents: the Berlin-Bremen Study.

Patterns of leisure-time physical activity among 932 West German boys and girls from two distinct socioeconomic groups were examined longitudinally over a 2-year period beginning with seventh to eighth grade students. Activity indices reflect the weekly time spent in activities, the weekly frequency of participation, and the average duration per activity episode. The indices refer to all activities, to moderate or vigorous activities, or to each individual activity. The average seventh to eighth grade student spent 10.1 hr/week engaged in all of the activities measured. Overall, the time devoted to these activities declined by 10% during the 2-year study period, with the relative decrease being larger for vigorous than for moderate activities. The decline in time spent in vigorous activity was due to a decreased frequency of participation; whereas the decline in moderate activity was primarily attributable to the decreased average duration per episode. Boys spent about 3 hr/week more in all activities than girls, with the difference largely being due to the boys' greater participation in vigorous activities. Weekly activity time among girls did not vary substantially with socioeconomic status. However, compared with boys of higher socioeconomic status, boys in the lower socioeconomic grouping were 2-3 hr/wk more active because they devoted more time to moderate activities. The results indicate that the identified activity patterns in the population strongly depend on the activity dimensions on which the measure focuses.

Low-level cigarette smoking and longitudinal change in serum cholesterol among adolescents. The Berlin-Bremen Study.

The current study was conducted to determine if smokers and nonsmokers differ in serum concentrations of high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL-C) before smoking initiation and if a decline in HDL-C levels could be detected among adolescents during the first two years of smoking. Changes in HDL-C levels and smoking were observed longitudinally in 1983, 1984, and 1985 among 691 seventh and eighth graders (age range, 12 to 14 years) from two German cities; 82% were nonsmokers at baseline. For these baseline nonsmokers, no differences in baseline HDL-C concentrations were found between those who became smokers and those who remained nonsmokers. In contrast, those who became light (one to 39 cigarettes per week) or moderate (greater than or equal to 40 cigarettes per week) smokers by one or two years after the initial examination evidenced lower mean HDL-C concentrations relative to persistent nonsmokers at follow-up, constituting a decrement of -0.016 mmol/L [SE = .035] (-0.6 mg/dL) [SE = 1.4] for light smokers and -0.114 mmol/L [SE = .064] (-4.4 mg/dL) [SE = 2.5] for moderate smokers. These findings suggest that short-term exposure to cigarette smoke at low levels may have atherogenic consequences.

[Necessities and possibilities for the prevention of cardiovascular and pulmonary diseases in childhood and adolescence]. / Notwendigkeiten und Möglichkeiten der Prävention kardiovaskulärer und pulmonaler Krankheiten im Kindes- und Jugendalter.

In an exploratory study involving 818 pupils 12-16 years of age blood pressure, total serum cholesterol, and smoking behavior were studied. 38.3% of the boys (N = 154) and 47.3% of the girls (N = 143) aged 15-16 demonstrated singular or combined elevated risk variables, cigarette smoking being the most predominant risk factor. 44.5% of the pupils of this age group answered to be regular smokers. 59.8% (N = 183) of secondary school pupils stated to be regular smokers as compared to 15.7% (N = 166) of grammar school pupils. The most important socialpsychological process variables were attitude of friends towards smoking, smoking experience of friends, and social function of smoking within groups. The importance of these variables showed differences according to type of school as well as gender which should be taken into account modelling preventing programmes.

Recovery of vision with the deprived eye after the loss of the non-deprived eye in cats.

Closing one eye from birth to adulthood in kittens leads to well documented deficits in the visual system and has therefore frequently been used as an animal model for occlusion amblyopia. This study deals with the question whether vision through the deprived eye can be improved by appropriate postdeprivation manipulations and training. The performance of longterm monocularly deprived cats in a pattern discrimination task (bars of light had to be extracted from static two-dimensional visual noise) was measured quantitatively. The threshold in this test was three times higher than normal for the deprived eye when the non-deprived eye was closed by lid-suture, but only twice as high when the non-deprived eye was enucleated. This difference was statistically significant at the p less than 0.01 level in a t-test. The possible explanation for these behavioural findings is discussed on the basis of neurophysiological data from single cells in the visual cortex of the same animals obtained using a testing procedure similar to the behavioural tests. The better performance with the deprived eye after the non-deprived eye was lost may be related to an increase in the number of cortical cells driven from the deprived eye or to a reduction of "internal noise" after degeneration of the dominant pathway.

Psychophysical and neurophysiological investigations of the effects of early visual deprivation in the cat.

Cats can locate objects with their monocularly deprived eye best in the monocular segment of their visual field. In contrast they show a marked deficit towards the midline and an almost total failure in the binocular segment contralateral to the deprived eye. This correlates well with the relative frequency of units in the superior colliculus activated by that eye. The performance of the cat in a pattern discrimination task is three times better with the normal eye than with the deprived eye if the patterns have to be detected on a background of visual noise. This correlates well with the loss of units in the visual cortex activated by the deprived eye. There is no loss of visual acuity in the units in lamina A of the lateral geniculate body, but in lamina A1 visual acuity is reduced to half the normal value due to monocular deprivation.