Nocturnal Blood Pressure Dipping is Abolished in Old-Elderly Hospitalized Patients.

Introduction: During sleep there is reduction of blood pressure (BP) caused by a decrease of the sympathetic nervous tone. This nocturnal "dipping" phenomenon, assessable with ambulatory blood pressure monitoring (ABPM), is blunted with increasing age.

Aim: To assess the effect of hospitalization on night-time BP fall in old-elderly patients.

ABPM Induced Alarm Reaction: A Possible Cause of Overestimation of Daytime Blood Pressure Values Reduced By Treatment with Beta-Blockers.

Introduction: Alarm reaction to clinical blood pressure (BP) measurement, defined white-coat effect (WCE), can cause overestimation of true BP values.

Aim: To assess whether ambulatory blood pressure monitoring (ABPM) can similarly affect BP values during the initial hours of recording.

Methods: In 420 ABPMs selected for a first systolic BP (SBP) reading at least 10 mmHg higher than the mean daytime SBP, we calculated mean diurnal and 24 h SBP with and without the exclusion of the two first hours of recording defined as the WCE window (WCEw).

Prospective study on long-term treatment with oxcarbazepine in pediatric epilepsy.

Following a previous preliminary report on a group of children suffering from partial epilepsies, we present the final considerations on the same group in order to evaluate the long-term efficacy, tolerability and safety of oxcarbazepine (OXC). We enrolled 36 patients (mean age 8.5), between January 2003 and December 2004, with new diagnosis of partial epilepsy: 25 patients were affected by idiopathic partial epilepsy, eight by symptomatic epilepsy and three by cryptogenic epilepsy.

Unusual diagnosis in a child suffering from juvenile Alexander disease: clinical and imaging report.

Alexander disease is a rare, sporadic leukoencephalopathy characterized by white-matter abnormalities with frontal predominance and, as a rule, clinically associated with megalencephaly, seizures, spasticity, and psychomotor deterioration. We describe a boy who was diagnosed as affected by anorexia nervosa because of his refusal to eat, progressive weight loss, and psychologic disturbances. The observation of a hyperintense lesion on T(2)-weighed magnetic resonance images (MRIs) was initially explained as a pontine and extrapontine myelinolysis related to malnutrition.