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Twenty-five patients with perennial rhinitis completed a double-blind cross-over trial of intranasal beclomethasone dipropionate 200 mug daily and placebo. Of these patients 19 preferred the active drug and two preferred placebo. There were significant reductions in symptom scores for nasal obstruction and rhinorrhoea and in the use of decongestant nasal drops when using the active drug. No changes in morning plasma cortisol levels occurred during the three-week treatment period.

1. Test meals containing various concentrations of glucose, maltose, sucrose, fructose, lactose, galactose and mixtures of these solutes were given to six healthy subjects. All meals contained 40 mM sodium citrate.2. The slowing of gastric emptying produced by the disaccharides in test meals was generally consistent with the stimulation of duodenal osmoreceptors occuring after the hydrolysis of the disaccharides.3. Glucose was slightly more effective, per osmole, in slowing gastric emptying than was galactose.4. By comparison with glucose or galactose, fructose was much less effective in slowing gastric emptying. In three subjects out of six there was a threshold for its effect.5. The results may be indicative of the relative activities of disaccharidases in the brush border of the small intestine. They are consistent with there being an osmoreceptor deep to these enzymes which slows gastric emptying.

Of 16 steroid-dependent asthmatic patients oral treatment has been discontinued in six and reduced in four after the introduction of beclomethasone dipropionate. Substitution of inhaled beclomethasone for oral steroids was unsuccessful in the remaining six patients. Serial adrenal function studies in the patients whose oral treatment was discontinued showed progressive recovery, and five out of six had a normal response to tetracosactrin stimulation after two months.