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In July’s issue:

Perspectives

Necropsy Squier and Ironside argue that falling necropsy rates have impaired our ability to advance our understanding of disease processes, and are posing a significant risk to the public health (pp 551–3).

Rickets Bishop highlights the importance of awareness of Rickets and vitamin D deficiency illnesses, with increasing incidence in the developed world, both in infancy and adolescence (pp 549–50).

Children’s medicines Choonara charts recent progress in improving the safe use of medicines for children in the UK (pp 550–1).

Leading article

Intersex A consensus statement for the management of this complex group of disorders is presented (pp 554–63).

Original research

Rickets A case series of 126 children with rickets in Sydney over 10 years demonstrates steadily increasing numbers (pp 564–8).

Rickets 28% of healthy adolescent girls in Manchester were vitamin D deficient; 17% severely deficient. This was related to sun exposure (pp 569–72).

Paracetamol overdose Hepatic encephalopathy is an independent risk factor for the need for liver transplantation, but elevated transaminases are not predictive (pp 598–603).

BCG A case series of complications of BCG immunisation illustrates increased problems associated with a new strain of vaccine (pp 594–7).

Prescribing A survey of Scottish paediatricians describes anxiety about the safety and efficacy of off-label prescribing in children (pp 587–7).

Phenylketonuria Higher doses of protein substitute result in lower phenylalanine levels in children with phenylketonuria (pp 588–93).

Diarrhoea The addition of micronutrients to the diet reduced diarrhoeal prevalence in Pakistani children, an effect not replicated with lactic acid bacteria (pp 573–9).

Spider naevi Well children can have more than five spider naevi. In contrast to adult liver disease, most children with liver disease have few or no spiders (pp 604–5).

Croup A single dose of prednisolone is less efficacious than dexamethasone in preventing re-attendance with croup (pp 580–3).

Short reports

vCJD A national survey does not show any hidden burden of vCJD in the childhood population, but is impaired by very low necropsy rates (pp 608–9).

Ataxia telangectasia Data from two large cohorts suggests life expectancy in ataxia telangectasia is between 19 and 25 years (pp 610–11).

Rickets A survey in the West Midlands suggests an incidence of rickets of 7.5 per 100 000, with marked ethnic differences (pp 606–7).

Review

Body composition Methods for the measurement and estimation of body composition are described, analysed and compared (pp 612–7).