Incurable side effect of cancer treatment in the spotlight
Photo:
123rf
An incurable side effect of cancer treatment is in the spotlight as researchers work toward better understanding why it happens, and who it's most likely to affect.
Lymphedema is a condition of localised swelling caused when the lymphatic system can't do its job of removing excess fluid from tissue, usually because of damaged or removed lymph nodes.
The fluid builds up, causing pain and tightness, and while it can be mitigated, there is no cure, and funding for treatment is hard to come by.
An estimated 40 percent of those who have undergone treatment for breast cancer have lymphedema in their arms as a result of removed lymph nodes near the breast, under the armpit.
But the data is patchy, at best, with no national registry or numbers of people who have the condition.
In 2023, Auckland University Bioengineering researcher Dr Hayley Reynolds secured Marsden Grant funding in an effort to better understand the condition.
Catherine Davies, who is also with the Bioengineering Institute, recently finished treatment for breast cancer and now has lymphoedema.
Dr Reynolds and Catherine join Kathryn from our Auckland studio.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
RNZ News
23 minutes ago
- RNZ News
The McMigraine meal hack: Does it actually work?
A 'migraine brain' is sensitive to sensory input. Photo: Quin Tauetau / RNZ Epidemiologist Dr Fiona Imlach has lived with migraines for many years. Now, as co-founder of Migraine Foundation Aotearoa New Zealand, she has also spent many years researching them. Imlach told Sunday Morning's Jim Mora a TikTok video suggesting a 'McMigraine Meal' - a bottle of Coke and a side of salty fries - as a treatment might not be totally far-fetched. "TikTok's not really the font of all wisdom but there is some element in this in terms of the cola, has caffeine in it, and we know that caffeine can be quite an effective migraine treatment." However, she said medication with caffeine in it could be a problem if over-used. An alternative was to limit caffeine intake to one or two cups of coffee per day and take it at the same time each day because the migraine brain "likes routine". A sugar hit could also help Imlach said, because there was a theory that a migraine attack was triggered by nerves in the brain being depleted of glucose. On the salty fries, Imlach said food cravings were much stronger during the prodrome phase causing people to think the food they ate triggered the attack when actually it was already underway. Salt was not known to help treat an attack, she said. A TikTok video claims a McDonald's coke and fries can help a migraine. Photo: AFP Imlach told Mora there was a lot of mystery surrounding migraines. In the past migraines had been treated as a vascular disease and thought of as an allergic disease with certain triggers, but Imlach said it was very much recognised as a neurological disease. She said migraine was a genetically-determined condition and some people inherited a pre-disposition through one of their parents. A person who suffered migraines was thought to have a "sensitive" brain, or a hyperactivity toward sensory input, and it did not react the way it normally would, she said. "That triggers all these other things you get with a migraine attack. Often people think about headache pain but also things like being sensitive to light and sound." Those symptoms, along with nausea, fatigue and mood disturbances were a brain disturbance caused by the sensitivities, and could be painful and unpleasant, she said. Migraine was a disease of the brain which was present all the time but symptoms were only triggered during an attack. When the attack was over, the migraine tendency didn't go away. Imlach said a classic migraine started with sufferers "feeling a bit rotten" in the "premonitory" stage, which preceded the attack. This was a stage people hadn't recognised very well in the past. For Imlach, she suffered cognitive difficulties during this phase - being unable to speak properly. The premonitory or prodrome phase could last up to two days according to brain scans of some patients. "So you're going about your life, you haven't got a headache, you think you're fine but actually your migraine attack has started." These early symptoms included difficulty concentrating, fatigue, and mild head pain and that could be a warning sign. A full blown attack involved other symptoms including a visual aura. "I used to get spots in my vision, which I couldn't see, or I'd get flashing lights. "And then you move on to the headache phase and that can last for a few hours to a few days. "Quite a severe pain. Usually on one side of the head - for me it was on one side of the head - sometimes it would move to the other side of the head for a while." Neck pain, nausea and vomiting were also common for Imlach who said while light sensitivity was common for many, she was highly sensitive to sound during an attack. "Even someone speaking to me can feel really painful and echo in my head and also I get sensitive to smells so smells can be really unpleasant. "Even someone's deodorant can make me want to vomit." Migraine prevalence was two to three times higher in women than men. "The hormone is probably the most common trigger. So women who have migraines will have a hormonal triggering element to that." This became obvious around puberty, while after menopause migraines could improve. There were two types of treatment for migraine - acute and prevention. The best available treatments for an attack was migraine-specific medication called triptans, as well as over-the-counter medicines. For frequent and severe attacks, Imlach said a preventative treatment should be considered to "calm the brain down". "Traditionally all we've had is treatments that have been repurposed from other conditions. "So we've had anti-depressants which people have taken and sometimes found it helps their migraine attacks." Others found to help were beta blockers and anti-hypertension medicines as well as botox, none of which were specifically developed to prevent migraines. In the past nine years new micro-medications had been developed specifically to treat one of the neurotransmitters in the brain involved in the pain part of the migraine attack, Imlach said. "Those have been a revolution in treatment and they don't have the same side-effects - they're much more tolerated - because they've been developed with migraine in mind." Unfortunately, they were not funded, she said. "We have three available in New Zealand at the moment but they are quite expensive and they're on Pharmac's waiting list so they've been approved for funding but they're just waiting to see whether Pharmac can actually get the budget to fund them." Imlach said frequent migraine sufferers had to be careful about taking too many migraine-specific triptans and over-the-counter medicines such as non-steroidal drugs. "If you start taking too many of those you can actually make the headache worse and you can actually develop a headache." That spoke to the migraine brain's sensitivity, she said. Sign up for Ngā Pitopito Kōrero , a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.
RNZ News
an hour ago
- RNZ News
Alligator that swallowed jandal at Auckland Zoo gets all clear
Dixie the American alligator from Auckland Zoo during the procedure to put a camera put down her throat after she swallowed a jandal. Photo: Auckland Zoo An Auckland Zoo alligator which ate a jandal left behind in its enclosure had to undergo an hospital procedure to make sure the man-made object had passed. American alligator Dixie was seen swallowing the jandal in her habitat, Auckland Zoo said in a post on Facebook. "Although after this she continued eating well, our vet team wanted to ensure this was not going to be a longer-term health issue for her," the social media post on Sunday said. "Alligators can consume foreign objects because they're 'sit and wait' hunters. "If something moves near them, they will often automatically snap and eat it. This means that in the wild, alligators can die from ingesting man-made objects." The zoo's vets were joined by Dr Tommy Fluen, an external specialist experienced with endoscopy - where a thin flexible tube is passed into a patient's body. Once Dixie was safely anaesthetised, Fluen was able to look inside her stomach using a small camera attached to the scope. "Every inch of Dixie's stomach was examined, and thankfully a jandal was not found - however we did find a lot of half-digested meat and vegetation. "This means it is very likely the jandal was expelled previously." While the endoscopy was taking place, the zoo's vet team took the opportunity to check Dixie's eyes and body condition, which were "in great shape". "It would be amazing if Dixie never came across a man-made object in her habitat," the Auckland Zoo post said. "Hopefully, our visitors can help us with that preventative healthcare by going home with everything that they brought to the zoo." Head of veterinary services James Chatterton said for many people a trip to the zoo was the time they developed an interest in animals and started to care. "And that's the first step on providing a better future for wild animals everywhere," he said. Sign up for Ngā Pitopito Kōrero , a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.
RNZ News
13 hours ago
- RNZ News
Christchurch Hospital clinical director John O'Donnell retires after 42 years
Christchurch clinical director of immunology/immunopathology John O'Donnell in his lab. Photo: Supplied/Te Whatu Ora After 42 years working at Christchurch Hospital, John O'Donnell says it still feels like he just started yesterday. O'Donnell retired on Friday, 6 June, as clinical director of immunology/immunopathology. He started his time at Christchurch Hospital in 1977, as a medical student, moving up from Dunedin. After three years, he left for Waikato and was then based in a couple of other spots, including two years back in Christchurch, but by 1989, he was back as a consultant and he has remained ever since. O'Donnell has seen many changes in his time there, with the most notable being the complete change in the hospital buildings and the huge advances in computing technology. "When I started, there was no internet and there have been huge advances in computing technology," he said. "Email didn't exist, so communication is much more rapid, with cell phones and things like that. When we were on call, people used to carry around these bricks of a phone. I inherited one of those bricks to carry around." He said in laboratories, the automating of testing had also been a big change, although less so in his specialty area of immunology, where some testing still needed to be done manually. "You still get the scientist standing at a bench and pipetting things." He said there were also big changes in the understanding of the immune system. "Increasingly, it is recognised that many diseases we deal with are an aberration of the immune response. Certain diseases, like encephalitis or certain muscle diseases, it's the immune system attacking those organs to produce some quite bizarre changes in those organs, which we never thought of as being part of us, in terms of our immune system, going haywire. "We often saw them as perhaps a virus or some other thing, but often, it turns out it is the immune system attacking things." In Christchurch, he said there was an interest in muscle diseases and particularly those triggered by statin use. "Its a very rare complication, but it is one of the interests we have locally, testing for that sort of disorder called auto-immune myositis - an auto immune muscle inflammation. We have done some work and publications in that area." He still found the area fascinating and was amazed how quickly his time in the job had gone by. "I could have started yesterday." As he departed after more than 40 years, O'Donnell said the health system was going through its third major shake-up. "Health is always under strain," he said. "It's inevitable it will change. I don't think it's particularly helpful people yelling and posturing. Everybody knows there is a strain and we have to work together to come up with a system that works, without extracting things from other people all the time. "We have to work together and realise what the limitations are, and be realistic about what we can deliver, without crashing the system entirely." Sign up for Ngā Pitopito Kōrero , a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.
