Preface

This issue is devoted to selected short papers based on free communications presented at the 33rd Annual Meeting of the Society for the Study of Inborn Errors of Metabolism held in Toledo, 12-15 September 1995. The meeting opened with a mini-symposium entitled 'Prevention of inborn errors: detection, treatment and ethical issues' while the theme o f the main symposium was lactic acidosis and inborn errors of energy metabolism. Reviews arising from these symposia will appear in later issues. This was a very well-attended meeting and the posters were a particularly strong feature with 314 submissions, though limitations on space meant that a few of these had to be presented in abstract form only. Ten communications were presented orally. Free communications not reported elsewhere in this issue are listed by title overleaf. A few copies of the book of abstracts of free communications (ISBN 1-870617-08-8) are available for purchase at a cost of £15 each, including postage: enquiries to SSIEM, Kluwer Academic Publishers, PO Box 55, Lancaster LA1 1PE, UK. There is a wealth of information in these abstracts, far more than can be absorbed at the meeting itself, and they are increasingly being cited in the specialist literature. For an experimental period, starting with the 1996 symposium, selected abstracts will be published as a supplement to the Journal to increase their general availability. We will aim to have this supplement distributed two or three weeks before the meeting to give those attending time for preliminary study. There are two SSIEM Awards this year, one for a clinically-based study, the other for more laboratory-based research. These have been given respectively to M. Spada, S. Ferraris, G. B. Ferrero, M. Sartore, C. Lanza, F. Peffetto, L. de Sanctis, C. Dompr, N. Blau and A. Ponzone for their paper 'Monitoring treatment in tetrahydrobiopterin deficiency by serum prolactin' and to J. Jaeken, M. Detheux, L. Van Maldergem, J. R Frijns, Ph. Alliet, M. Foulon, H. Carchon and E. Van Schaftingen for '3-Phosphoglycerate dehydrogenase deficiency and 3-phosphoserine phosphatase deficiency: inborn errors of serine biosynthesis'. With pressure on space in all scientific journals we hope that contributors and users will accept our suggestion that papers in this issue will be generated and used primarily as short communications rather than as preliminary abstracts. We are not able to accommodate all those offered for publication and thus an element of appraisal is inherent in their selection. It is clear to the editors that some are preliminary communications which allow priority to be established. However, others are worthwhile records which are adequate in themselves as contributions to our accumulated experience and do not require additional recording.