I suppose I'd like to know what you all think about

I think it it make the child chronically ill for the rest of its life
in cases where this would not have happened without the antibiotic.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5075895/

Woody

By Tom Webb

In ever-growing numbers, something seems to be poisoning America's
kids. But what?

Rates are soaring for diagnoses of childhood asthma, autism, allergies
and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. Scientists don't fully
understand what's happening among this generation of children - but
they're worried by a mounting toll of sick kids and the growing costs
to families, schools, taxpayers and society.

In Minnesota, autism diagnoses alone have grown twentyfold in a
generation, making a once-rare condition an unhappy fact of modern
life.

Now, the federal government hopes to unravel the mystery, by launching
the largest study of children in U.S. history. It's called the National
Children's Study, a two-decade-long effort that would track 100,000
children from the womb into adulthood, examining their genetic makeup,
environment, eating habits, home situations and health. The cost: a
massive $2.7 billion.

"It's big science. It's the same order of magnitude as the human genome
project," said Dr. Peter Scheidt, director of the study's program
office, at the National Institute of Child Health and Human
Development.

The study seeks to answer questions now raging within medical circles,
among educators and in parent groups. Are these conditions caused by
toxins? By genetics? Too much television? Bad diets? Home situations?
Possibly some combination?

It has many supporters, who cite the staggering cost both in medical
care and in the impact on families; they welcome the effort to
systematically explore why this is happening. But in Washington, the
competition for research dollars is always fierce, and even some
children's advocates are unsure the data produced will be worth the
cost.

Mary Powell, director of the Autism Society of Minnesota, would welcome
some answers. In the past 15 years, she has seen an explosion in the
number of Minnesota kids diagnosed with autism-related conditions, from
about 100 children to nearly 3,000. Some of that growth reflects better
diagnosis of autism, but she suspects something else is happening, too
- with troubling consequences.

The root cause of autism is "the nagging question forever for parents,"
Powell said, "because they're always saying, 'If there's something I
could have done.' That's a very profound question in parents' minds
because they never get rid of the feeling that, somehow, the course of
their children's life could have been different."

For Gretchen Moen of Eagan, it's asthma that has altered her family's
life.

Her athletic son, Patrick, now 18, has asthma, and she vividly
remembers the early struggles.

"When you have a kid with a chronic illness, it affects everybody in
the family," she said. "He missed probably half of kindergarten, and
half of first grade" because he was too sick to attend school. "He was
the kind of kid who'd get a cold, and it would last him the entire
winter."

Her son's story does have a happy ending: with determination,
medication and some allowances, Patrick has become a star athlete at
St. Thomas Academy.

But his mother remembers the worry, too.

"There were many, many nights when you'd stay up all night listening to
your child breathe, just to make sure he keeps breathing."

UNEXPLAINED INCREASE

Despite much medical detective work, scientists still do not fully
understand the soaring rates for childhood asthma, allergies, attention
deficit hyperactivity disorder and several other health conditions.
Even childhood obesity, although better understood, has elements that
remain puzzling.

"They're all conditions that are pretty common in children, and are
increasing," Scheidt said, "and clearly there are multiple factors that
are contributing to these conditions - genetic predisposition,
behavior, environmental exposures, the way they're managed.... How they
contribute, and how they interact, we really don't have a very good
handle on. You need to measure them carefully, you need to study them
over time ... and you can only do it with a very large study, to
separate out the groups and subgroups."

Minnesota school districts large and small are struggling to meet the
ever-rising demand for expensive services. Chris McHugh with the St.
Croix River Education District sees a surge there in children with a
spectrum of autism disorders.

"We're certainly seeing an increase that is rather inexplicable to us,"
McHugh said. "It's probably not the big increase as in urban areas, but
it's certainly putting a strain on our resources, because these kids
need very individualized resources."

Ann Hoxie has been a school nurse in the St. Paul public schools for 20
years. Like many front-line professionals, she's seeing much more
childhood asthma. In St. Paul, it afflicts at least 8 percent of the
students. In Minneapolis, it's 12 percent.

"Last fall was a bad allergy season, and we had lots of kids having
problems with asthma, and a fair number of 911 calls, just because we
didn't have the right meds for kids. We didn't see nearly so much of
that 20 years ago," said Hoxie, the district's administrator for
student wellness. "We had a student die of asthma last year. Students
don't die at school! But we did have that happen."

Officials frequently ask themselves, what's causing all this?

"All of these things existed before, but it's the volume that we see,"
Hoxie said. "We do question it, but we're kind of busy responding. And
it's not just here in Minnesota. It's everywhere."

The children's study won't focus solely on those problems. It will
examine many aspects of child development - including family
structure, ethnicity, prenatal care and family income. The hoped-for
answers run the gamut, too, with researchers craving insights into the
causes of cerebral palsy, schizophrenia and other conditions.

Still, the urgency is being driven by unexplained spike in childhood
conditions. Dr. Duane Alexander, director of the National Institute of
Child Health and Human Development, last month told a Casey Journalism
Center seminar that if even some answers emerge, the study's cost will
be more than covered.

The study itself was authorized by Congress back in 2000, but the tough
part will be finding the money in the federal budget.

The real money crunch will come in a year, maybe two, Scheidt said,
when hundreds of millions of dollars will be needed to start
recruiting, then interviewing and tracking, 100,000 parents.

If it works as planned, the study will begin churning out some answers
in about five years. Advocates hope it will uncover both what is
harmful - and what is not. That's one reason the study is endorsed by
children's advocacy groups, as well as the American Chemistry Council,
which feels its products are sometimes unfairly blamed.

UNCERTAIN OUTCOME

Dr. Sheldon Berkowitz, medical director at Children's Hospitals and
Clinics in Minneapolis, notes that studies on this scale are unique and
don't always follow predictable lines, so he's a bit wary about the
talk of finding root causes.

"The grand scale of it is what's so overwhelming," Berkowitz said of
the study. "My guess is that, with a study like this, you're going to
have a whole lot of things falling out of this that you never really
expected ... and you may be disappointed on stuff that you hoped to
get."

Berkowitz wondered if a smaller study might be adequate, noting, "I
wonder if $2.7 billion is best spent in this way, when there's all
these immediate pressing needs for kids."

Scheidt explained that with 100,000 children, researchers will be able
to examine large subgroups to compare and contrast.

If researchers want to know why 8-year-old middle-class Hispanic boys
have high rates of asthma, scientists can examine a lifetime of health
and child-development data for such a group - and a parallel group of
8-year-old middle-class Hispanic boys who don't have asthma. Why did
one group get it, and the other did not? What's different?

"Because we have such a large study, we will be able to obtain and find
a control group that is comparable," Scheidt said. "It is the size of
the study that will enable us to do that. And that will allow us to
draw conclusions."

If the study pins down some hard-to-define problems, that may be
useful, too. Thomas Dickhudt, superintendent of the Chisago Lakes
school district, knows that more kids are being diagnosed with autism
and Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, but he wonders: Are there
more sick kids, or just changes in how kids are diagnosed?

"That's the part I'm having trouble with," he said.

Dickhudt, however, clearly sees more problems with asthma and allergies
among his students. His 3,500-student Chisago Lakes district is
spending $2 million to improve air quality in five of its buildings,
upgrading air circulation, ventilation, carpets, and dehumidifiers.

"It's a very high expense for our district," Dickhudt said. With dust,
mold and air quality issues, "There does seem to be a greater
sensitivity among people."

The U.S. Department of Education tracks soaring rates of
attention-deficit and hyperactivity disorder. A decade ago, 83,000 U.S.
students were counted in a broad category that included the syndrome.
Last year, that had increased nearly fivefold.

"We estimate that at least one student in every classroom had
(attention deficit disorder) or (attention deficit hyperactivity
disorder)," said Jim Bradshaw, an Education Department spokesman.

Moen is active in the Minnesota Asthma Coalition, where each year she
sees more and more kids with asthma - reflecting better diagnosis,
she says, but perhaps something more.

She would welcome answers to fears that bedevil a million parents.

"Are we doing something to our children, so to speak, that has caused
this? I think that's what everybody wants to know."

The U.S. Department of Education tracks soaring rates of
attention-deficit and hyperactivity disorder.

A decade ago, 83,000 U.S. students were counted in a broad category
that included the syndrome. Last year, that had increased nearly
fivefold. Rates are soaring for diagnoses of childhood asthma, autism
and allergies as well.

My ENT has told me that he has some sinusitis patients who are allergic
to all antibiotics.  For them, surgery, topical nasal steroid sprays and
nasal irrigation are the best options.

If none of your physicians has yet prescribed nasal irrigation and
topical nasal steroid sprays for your daughter, you should talk about it
with them.  Combined with allergy treatment, that may bring her sinus
problems under long-term control.  If not, then surgery is always an
option too.

Good luck.

I would think the ENT doctor would treat based on symptoms not CAT scan
results. If she doesn't have thick, green mucous or fever she probably
doesn't have an infection. Thickened sinus membranes without the mucous
are a result of allergies.

As other posters have suggested you should consult an allergist and get
your daughter skin tested for allergies. At the same time, the allergy DR
can check her for antibiotic allergies too using blood tests especially as
she already shows reactions to penicillian antibiotics. Once you find out
the results of the allergy tests, there are many medicines and allergy
shot treatments that can greatly relieve the symptoms. Also there are many
non medical things you can do to reduce allergies by changing the
environment of your child's bedroom. Such things include removing heavy
curtains, stuffed animals, getting dust-mite proof covers for
pillows/mattresses, removing wall to wall carpeting and installing
hardwood or non rug floor covering (tile/linoleum), decluttering the room,
frequent washing pillows and bedding in hot water to kill dust mites, etc.
You allergist should have suggestions once she is tested.

May be you could consult a major medical center near you and see if there
is an ENT doctor that specializes in treating children. I would be very,
very cautious about anyone suggesting surgery - I believe I read that a
child's sinus passageways aren't fully developed until the teen years.

In my last post I meant to say:

Thickened sinus membranes without the mucous discharge can be a result of
allergies or inflammation.

A CT scan can tell a lot.   That is a lot of thickening.  Is there a lot of
dust or mold in the house?   I would not argue with the CT scan as such.

But you have a right to stop the medications and tests and challenges and
treatments and see what happens for a while, if you want, especially since she
seems ok now.

Just tell the doctors that that is what you would like to try.  I think that
you will find that they will accept that if you take the responsibility for the
decision, since the child is symptom free at the moment.

You would need to taper off the prednisone if she is still taking that.  You
cannot just stop that cold.   So you would need tapering  instructions if you
want to taper that off.  

You can always get second opinions too or switch to another doctor.

You certainly do need to identify the cause of the thickening but if symptoms
are ok now for 12 days then I think you could postpone further testing for a
while to see how things go.....

<snip>

Chin Gao,

All I can tell you, from my personal experience, is that taking
medications - *especially antibiotics* - when they are not really
needed is a huge mistake.

Maybe you already know, but antibiotics not only kill 'bad bacteria',
but they are also extremely effective at killing off all the 'friendly
bacteria' in the digestive system. Just a few courses of antibiotics
in the past have left me (and others I've known) with quite nasty
consequences. My digestive system just became completely dysfunctional
and I developed a very nasty systemic 'yeast' infection which had a
terrible impact on my overall health and really did a lot of damage to
my immune system as well.

Basically, what you need to be very aware of is that antibiotics
destroy 'friendly bacteria' in the digestive system and make sure that
your daughter eats plenty of yogurt and/or takes supplements with
acidophilus and other 'friendly bacteria' to keep her digestive system
functioning normally.

Doctors rarely tell you anything about this potentially severe
consequence of using antibiotics.

Good luck with your daughters problem

iJah