Certain Arthritis, Crohn’s Drugs May Raise Kids’ Cancer Risk: FDA
TUESDAY, Aug. 4 (HealthDay News) — Drugs widely used to fight rheumatoid arthritis, Crohn’s disease and other inflammatory disorders must now carry an updated “black box” warning label cautioning patients and doctors that the medicines may boost cancer risk in children and adolescents, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced Tuesday.
The drugs, called tumor necrosis factor (TNF) blockers, work by interrupting a protein that causes inflammation and damage to bones, cartilage and other tissue. They include Remicade (infliximab), Enbrel (etanercept), Humira (adalimumab), Cimzia (certolizumab pegol) and Simponi (golimumab).
“FDA announced that it has completed its analysis of TNF blockers and has concluded that there is an increased risk of lymphoma and other cancers associated with the use of these drugs in children and adolescents,” according to FDA spokeswomen Crystal Rice.
“This new safety information is now being added to the boxed warning for these products,” she said.
TNF blockers already carry FDA-mandated warning labels for other potential safety issues, including fungal infections. Tuesday’s announcement follows on the agency’s move last year to review several dozen reports of children who developed cancer while taking the medications. That investigation started in June 2008. The analysis took into account a number of reports of cancers in children treated with these drugs. The malignancies tended to arise about 30 months after starting on the medications.
About half of the cancers were lymphomas and some of the children died, according to the FDA.
The issue gained more prominence in July 2008 when doctors reporting in the New England Journal of Medicine outlined the case of a woman with Crohn’s disease who took a TNF blocker and then developed lung cancer. When she ceased using the drug, her cancer disappeared.
The agency is working with manufacturers to find new ways to define the risk of cancer in children and adolescents who use these drugs.
Dr. Patience White, chief public health officer at the Arthritis Foundation, said the risks and benefits of these drugs need to be weighed and the final decision whether to take them or not must be an individual one.
However, “it’s good to have this information out there,” White said. “It gives people with arthritis an opportunity to go to their doctor and talk about the risk/benefits.”
People with these inflammatory illnesses are already at an increased risk for cancer, White noted.
“Then you are giving a drug that probably increases the risk as well. But are both of those worth not taking the drug, and being disabled? That’s the discussion,” she said.
The hard part for patients will be to balance these risks and benefits, White added. “The risks of the side effects are often very small, but the chance that a person with juvenile arthritis will be disabled and deformed is very high if they don’t take therapy,” she said. “People often focus on risks and forget the benefits.”
Deciding whether or not to take these drugs should be based on the type of disease and a family history of cancer, White said. “It really matters to have a discussion about this,” she said. “There isn’t really one risk/benefit profile that fits for everybody.”
According to the FDA’s Rice, patients taking these drugs should:
- Be aware that taking TNF blockers may increase the risk of developing lymphoma, leukemia, and other cancers.
- Be aware that taking TNF blockers may increase the risk of developing psoriasis and may worsen pre-existing psoriasis.
- Review the accompanying medication guide.
- Do not stop or change medicines that have been prescribed without first talking with a knowledgeable health care professional.
- Pay close attention for any signs or symptoms of cancer such as unexplained weight loss or fatigue, swollen lymph nodes in the neck, underarms or groin, or easy bruising or bleeding. Promptly discuss any signs and symptoms with a health care professional.
Taken from http://antiquedress.blogspot.com/
Primark has withdrawn a padded bikini for children from sale after complaints from Mumsnet and others. Photograph: Lewis Stickley/PA
The pubescent padded bra has been hijacked by the faux-feminist family values brigade as a symbol of moral decline, along with the kiddie pole-dancing kit and the playboy bunny pencil case. With weeks to go before the General Election, politicians are falling over themselves to support Mumsnet's Let Girls Be Girls campaign, which pressures retailers to discontinue products that 'sexualise' young girls. Primark has become a particular focus of public disapproval, and the clothing outlet's pledge to stop stocking padded bikinis for seven-year-olds has been targeted by all three major parties, with David Cameron declaring the products a "completely disgraceful" example of "premature sexualisation".
where children are routinely well fed, a significant minority of seven-year-old girls have already started puberty, and most foster a natural curiosity about bodies and intimacy. Rather than encouraging healthy sexual exploration or promoting education, campaigns to protect girls from "sexualisation" assume that sexuality itself is a corrupting influence on young women.
Far from protecting young girls, the "anti-sexualisation" agenda actually serves a culture that shames girls if they have sexual feelings of their own while fetishising them as objects of erotic capital. The pornographic and advertising industries routinely infantilise adult women in an erotic context: in 2008, catwalk model Lily Cole infamously posed nude for French Playboy cuddling a teddy bear and licking a lollipop. Corporate visions of pubescent sexuality are marketed to children and adults alike as ritualised acts of erotic drag, and from an early age, young girls have a profound understanding that such sexual performance must be undertaken if we are not to be socially punished.
g women, sexual shame is learned in the playground, where we are schooled to suppress our authentic bodily appetites and mimic, instead, an adult ideal of erotic capital.
