This 8-Year-Old Girl Is the Youngest Person Ever to Be Diagnosed with Breast Cancer

A cancer diagnosis is always devastating, but the story of Chrissy Turner is especially distressing: The 8-year-old was diagnosed with secretory breast carcinoma earlier this month after discovering a lump in her breast.
“She came to us on a Sunday afternoon. She said, ‘Mommy I have been scared and I have this lump,'" Chrissy’s mom, Annette Turner, tells ABC News. “It had been there for a while.”

Annette says she “was in shock" when she got her daughter’s diagnosis, adding, “no child should ever have to go through cancer.”

Secretory breast carcinoma is extremely rare (it affects just one in one million people), although it has occurred in children in the past, according to research published in the Archives of Pathology & Laboratory Medicine journal. It also typically has a “favorable prognosis.”
Chrissy is the youngest known patient with this type of breast cancer, says Annette.
Chrissy’s doctors are confident that they can remove the tumor via a mastectomy. However, Chrissy will lose all of her breast tissue to prevent the cancer from coming back. It's unclear whether Chrissy will be able to develop breasts after her surgery, but according to the research published in the Archives of Pathology & Laboratory Medicine, "preservation of prepubertal breast tissue is important to ensure proper breast development; however, that is not always possible because of the location of the tumor."
Unfortunately, health battles aren’t new for the Turner family: Annette is a cervical cancer survivor, and her husband has non-Hodgkin's lymphoma.
"We're just going to keep fighting," Annette tells ABC4 Utah News. "Doing everything we can to smile every day and laugh every day and carry our head high and do our best to overcome this."

http://www.womenshealthmag.com/health/secretory-breast-carcinoma

Progesterone Does Not Improve Outcomes for Women With History of Recurrent Miscarriages

BIRMINGHAM, United Kingdom -- November 25, 2015 -- New research published in the New England Journal of Medicine shows that progesterone supplements in the first trimester of pregnancy do not improve outcomes in women with a history of unexplained recurrent miscarriages.
The findings mark the end of a 5-year trial and provide a definitive answer to 60 years of uncertainty on the use of progesterone treatment for women with unexplained recurrent losses.
The study of 826 women with previously unexplained recurrent miscarriage showed that those who received progesterone treatment in early pregnancy were no less likely to miscarry than those who received a placebo. This was true whatever their age, ethnicity, medical history, and pregnancy history.
Nearly two thirds of the women in the trial had their baby, whether they had progesterone or the placebo. The live birth rate was 65.8% in the treatment group, and 63.3% in the placebo group.
Though the results of the Progesterone in Miscarriage Treatment (PROMISE) trial will be disappointing to many, it will allow researchers to direct their efforts towards exploring other treatments that can reduce the risk.
“We had hoped, like many people, that this research would confirm progesterone as an effective treatment,” said Arri Coomarasamy, MD, University of Birmingham, Birmingham, United Kingdom. “Though disappointing, it does address a question that has remained unanswered since progesterone was first proposed as a treatment back in 1953. Fortunately, there are a number of other positives that we can take from the trial as a whole.”
The trial results also showed that there were no significant negative effects of progesterone treatment for women or for their babies. This is important information for women taking progesterone for other reasons, such as fertility treatment, or for those taking part in other trials.
“It may well be that progesterone supplements have other uses, such as preventing miscarriage in women with early pregnancy bleeding, so it’s not the end of the road,” said Dr. Coomarasamy. “Furthermore, the PROMISE trial created a solid network of doctors, nurses and midwives across the UK and beyond, all committed to miscarriage research. That wealth of expertise and information will be invaluable as we continue to explore and test other treatments that really can reduce the risk of miscarriage.”
SOURCE: University of Birmingham

Teasing Girls About Weight May Cause Lasting Harm

FRIDAY, Nov. 20, 2015 (Health Day News) -- Teasing overweight girls about their weight can cause lasting harm to their self-image and might increase their risk of eating disorders, a new study suggests.

 Weight status may be a more sensitive issue for children who are overweight or obese, and being teased about it may elicit a stronger response from them as opposed to children who are not overweight or obese," Norma Olvera, a professor and health educator at the University of Houston, said in a university news release.
The research included 135 black and Hispanic girls about age 11 who were overweight or obese. Eighty-one percent of the girls were obese. All of them said they were unhappy about their body weight and wished they were thinner, the researchers said.
"The study focused on black and Hispanic girls because they are at a higher risk of obesity, which may increase their desire to be thinner and lead them to engage in unhealthy eating behaviors," Olvera said. "Secondly, there is not a lot of research that explores these issues in minority girls."
Fifty-two percent of the girls said they had been teased about their weight by other girls. Sixty percent said they had been teased by boys, and some said they had been teased by siblings, the research revealed.
The teasing seemed to trigger unhealthy eating behaviors in the girls, the researchers found. But, it's important to note that this type of study isn't designed to prove a cause-and-effect relationship; it can only show an association between teasing and the girls' eating behaviors.
Seventy percent of those who were teased started to cut back on or skip meals, diet or starve themselves to lose weight, the study showed. The researchers also found that 12 percent engaged in binge eating followed by forcing themselves to throw up, and 33 percent reported eating because they were upset or bored (emotional eating).
"Results from this study may guide health educators and practitioners to design interventions to teach coping strategies to these children to help them deal with peer-weight teasing," Olvera said. "The findings also support social policies of no tolerance of weight-related teasing, particularly in school settings"
The study was published recently in the Journal of Early Adolescence.
SOURCE: University of Houston, news release, Nov. 10, 2015

DISPLACED IUCD

Laparoscopic Removal of displaced IUD

World Toilet Day is November 19th

Poorly built toilets and sewage systems are a major cause of illness and groundwater contamination. As clean water becomes more scarce, disposing of human waste in ways that do not cause more water contamination becomes increasingly important.

Human waste (feces and urine) can pollute water, food, and soil with germs and worms, leading to serious health problems. The safe disposal of human waste (sanitation) by building and maintaining toilets and washing hands prevents the spread of germs and is necessary for good health.
Whether your community uses pit toilets, toilets that turn human waste into fertilizer (ecological sanitation), toilets that flush human wastes and water (sewage), or another type of toilet, the main goal is to prevent human waste from contaminating drinking water, food, and our hands. Just as important as a safe and comfortable toilet is a way to wash hands after using it. Safe toilets and hand washing together can prevent most of the illnesses that come from germs in human waste.
Over 2.4 billion people around the world lack toilets, which means they lack access to good sanitation which helps them avoid disease in their homes, their communities and their water systems. 

It means that they struggle to avoid illness when they go out to relieve themselves, and if they're sick they struggle even harder to get well. It means that women risk violence every time they look for a quiet, private place to go.

Maybe if we forced our government leaders to dig their own latrines - and use and clean them - they'd develop the political will to solve the essentially simple problem of lack of access to sanitation. Until that happens, we can provide people with the knowledge to build and maintain healthy sanitation systems.   

  

 

 

Breastfeeding and Eyesight

Breastfeeding may help protect premature infants from a common eye disease that can lead to blindness.
A new study looks at how nursing affects the incidence of retinopathy of prematurity… a condition where abnormal blood vessels grow in the retina, increasing risk of detachment.
Researchers analyzed medical records of more than 2,200 preterm infants comparing breastfeeding to formula feeding.
While any amount of breastfeeding played a protective role in preventing retinopathy of prematurity, exclusive or mainly breastfeeding was associated with significant benefits in preventing severe disease.
The authors say these findings may be related to the antioxidant and immune protective properties of breast milk, which contains vitamin C, vitamin E and beta-carotene.
 Dr. Cindy Haines of HealthDay TV

Sweetened Drinks and Heart Failure

What you drink may be as important as what you eat when it comes to heart health.
A new study finds men who drink two or more servings of sweetened beverages per day are at increased risk of heart failure. Researchers tracked the health of around 42,000 men for more than a decade. Participants were asked to fill out food frequency questionnaires that looked at their average consumption of 96 food and drink items. During the monitoring period, about 3,600 new cases of heart failure were diagnosed and another 509 people died of the condition. Men who consumed two or more daily servings of sweetened drinks had a 23 percent higher risk of developing heart failure compared to those who did not. According to the study, tens of millions of people worldwide are affected by heart failure. The authors say these findings may aid in heart failure prevention strategies, such as improving diet recommendations.
Source:-  https://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/videos/news

Bioethical issues in medical practice Rights and duties of a parent

A girl suffering from intellectual disability, serious enough so that she could not take care of herself became pregnant at the care home. By the time the pregnancy was discovered she was pregnant for over four months. The girl was admitted to a government hospital and assessed for MTP. The girl insisted- from the point of view of her limited understanding of the matter- that she wanted to keep the child and bring it up herself. Doctors at the hospital where she was admitted after the pregnancy was discovered were of the opinion that she was intellectually unfit to look after herself, what to say of a child. What should the doctors do?

a) Carry out MTP regardless of the girl’s wishes

b) Allow the pregnancy to continue possibly to the future detriment of the unborn baby.

c) Any other recourse such as going to court – but what if the court orders continuance of the pregnancy? Who will look after the baby?




Source
Smita N Deshpande
Head, Dept. of Psychiatry, De-addiction Services
PGIMER-Dr. Ram Manohar Lohia Hospital
Park Street, New Delhi

Breastfeeding and Allergy Protection

Breastfeeding provides many emotional and physical benefits to babies, but allergy protection may not be one of them.
A new study finds no significant difference in allergies between children who were breastfed and those who were formula fed. Researchers analyzed the medical records of 194 children… 4 to 18 years old… who were diagnosed with allergic rhinitis or hay fever. They were divided into two groups based on their infant feeding history. 134 were breastfed and 60 were formula fed. The number of patients with a positive skin prick test for hay fever was the same in both groups.
They also had similar numbers of patients with asthma, eczema and food allergies.
One study author stresses breastfeeding is good for babies, and new mothers should continue to breastfeed. He says, “Larger studies need to be done to determine how these results might apply to the larger population."
       Source:-  Dr. Cindy Haines of HealthDay TV