Asthma

Asthma is a disease that affects your lungs. It causes repeated episodes of wheezing, breathlessness, chest tightness, and nighttime or early morning coughing. Asthma can be controlled by taking medicine and avoiding the triggers that can cause an attack. You must also remove the triggers in your environment that can make your asthma worse.

CDC’s National Asthma Control Program works to help Americans with asthma achieve better health and improved quality of life. The program funds states, school programs, and non-government organizations to help them improve surveillance of asthma, train health professionals, educate individuals with asthma and their families, and explain asthma to the public.

Learn How to Control Asthma

Asthma is a disease that affects your lungs. It is one of the most common long-term diseases of children, but adults can have asthma, too. Asthma causes wheezing, breathlessness, chest tightness, and coughing at night or early in the morning. If you have asthma, you have it all the time, but you will have asthma attacks only when something bothers your lungs.

In most cases, we don’t know what causes asthma, and we don’t know how to cure it. We know that if someone in your family has asthma you are more likely to have it.

How Can You Tell if You Have Asthma?

It can be hard to tell if someone has asthma, especially in children under age 5. Having a doctor check how well your lungs work and check for allergies can help you find out if you have asthma.

During a checkup, a doctor will ask if you cough a lot, especially at night. He or she will also ask whether your breathing problems are worse after physical activity or at certain times of year. The doctor will then ask about chest tightness, wheezing, and colds lasting more than 10 days. He or she will ask whether anyone in your family has or has had asthma, allergies, or other breathing problems. Finally, the doctor will ask questions about your home and whether you have missed school or work or have trouble doing certain things.

The doctor may also do a breathing test, called spectrometer, to find out how well your lungs are working by testing how much air you can breathe out after taking a very deep breath before and after you use asthma medicine.

What Is an Asthma Attack?

An asthma attack may include coughing, chest tightness, wheezing, and trouble breathing. The attack happens in your body’s airways, which are the paths that carry air to your lungs. As the air moves through your lungs, the airways become smaller, like the branches of a tree are smaller than the tree trunk. During an asthma attack, the sides of the airways in your lungs swell and the airways shrink. Less air gets in and out of your lungs, and mucous that your body makes clogs up the airways.

You can control your asthma by knowing the warning signs of an asthma attack, staying away from things that cause an attack, and following your doctor’s advice. When you control your asthma:

• you won’t have symptoms such as wheezing or coughing,
• you’ll sleep better,
• you won’t miss work or school,
• you can take part in all physical activities, and
• you won’t have to go to the hospital.

What Causes an Asthma Attack?

An asthma attack can happen when you are exposed to “asthma triggers.” Your asthma triggers can be very different from someone else’s asthma triggers. Know your triggers and learn how to avoid them. Watch out for an attack when you can’t avoid your triggers. Some of the most common triggers are tobacco smoke, dust mites, outdoor air pollution, cockroach allergen, pets, mold, smoke from burning wood or grass, and infections like flu.

How Is Asthma Treated?

Take your medicine exactly as your doctor tells you and stay away from things that can trigger an attack to control your asthma.

Everyone with asthma does not take the same medicine.

You can breathe in some medicines and take other medicines as a pill. Asthma medicines come in two types—quick-relief and long-term control. Quick-relief medicines control the symptoms of an asthma attack. If you need to use your quick-relief medicines more and more, visit your doctor to see if you need a different medicine. Long-term control medicines help you have fewer and milder attacks, but they don’t help you while you are having an asthma attack.

Asthma medicines can have side effects, but most side effects are mild and soon go away. Ask your doctor about the side effects of your medicines.

Kidney Failure

• Kidneys are the organs that filter waste products from the blood. They are also involved in regulating blood pressure, electrolyte balance, and red blood cell production in the body.
• Symptoms of kidney failure are due to the build-up of waste products and excess fluid in the body that may cause weakness, shortness of breath, lethargy, swelling, and confusion. Inability to remove potassium from the bloodstream may lead to abnormal heart rhythms and sudden death. Initially kidney failure may cause no symptoms.
• There are numerous causes of kidney failure, and treatment of the underlying disease may be the first step in correcting the kidney abnormality.
• Some causes of kidney failure are treatable and the kidney function may return to normal. Unfortunately, kidney failure may be progressive in other situations and may be irreversible.

The list of causes of kidney failure is often categorized based on where the injury has occurred.

Perennial causes (pre=before + renal=kidney) causes are due to decreased blood supply to the kidney. Examples of perennial causes of kidney failure are:

• Hypo volemia (low blood volume) due to blood loss
• Dehydration from loss of body fluid (for example, vomiting, diarrhea, sweating, fever)
• Poor intake of fluids
• Medication, for example, diuretics ("water pills") may cause excessive water loss
• Abnormal blood flow to and from the kidney due to obstruction of the renal artery or vein.

 

Breast Cancer

Breast Cancer

Breast cancer is the most common cancer in pregnant women and tends to affect women in their mid-30s. Although only about 1 in every 1,000 pregnant women gets breast cancer, the disease can be devastating to both the mother and her child -- so it is essential that pregnant women and their doctors continue to do routine breast exams and thoroughly investigate any suspicious lumps.

A major problem is that a lot of changes take place in a woman's breasts during pregnancy. This makes it harder to identify suspicious lumps. In addition, breast cancer tumors in pregnant women are often larger and more advanced by the time they are detected than lumps in women of the same age who are not pregnant.

How is breast cancer diagnosed??

The best thing you can do while pregnant is to see your obstetrician regularly. These doctor visits, called prenatal (or "before birth") visits, are very important in keeping both you and your baby in the best possible health. During these visits, your obstetrician will perform a breast examination to check for suspicious breast changes.

It is also important to regularly perform breast exams on yourself. Your doctor or nurse can teach you how to do this properly.

If a suspicious lump is found, your doctor will likely ask you to get a mammogram or an ultrasound. As in all procedures that expose you to radiation when you are pregnant, the technicians will take extra care to shield your baby from radiation during the mammogram.

If the lump is still suspicious after these tests, the doctor will usually perform a biopsy. In fact, your doctor will often recommend that you get a biopsy even if the initial tests come back negative. During the biopsy, a small sample of the suspicious tissue will be removed with a needle or by making a small cut. This sample is then thoroughly examined using a microscope and other methods to detect any cancer cells.

CANCER

Cancer is major public health problem for Pakistan where annually about 148,000 new cancer cases are diagnosed and almost 100,000 die due to cancer. The most common cancers in Pakistan are oral, lung, liver, breast, cervical and blood/bone-marrow cancer.

The major risk factors for cancer include smoking, physical inactivity, unhealthy diet, infections (hepatitis B/C, Human Papilloma virus) and exposure to toxins. All these can be prevented by adopting health life style and appropriate vaccinations. Therefore there is a need to educate the people especially the younger age group about risk factors of cancer and their preventive measures.

Cancer is a group of diseases involving abnormal cell growth with the potential to invade or spread to other parts of the body. Not all tumors are cancerous; benign tumors do not spread to other parts of the body.

Dog Bite Rabies

Rabies is endemic in Pakistan, with human infections being mostly due to the dog bite and cases are mostly diagnosed on clinical grounds only. Although no data on human rabies cases is available at the national level but it was estimated that 2,000 to 5,000 people die of rabies every year. Human rabies is not a notifiable disease in Pakistan and there is also no nationally coordinated response to the diseases and its surveillance.

In the past, globally all stress was being given on the management of dog bite and rabies with introduction newer and cost-effective vaccines. Despite all this, the overall treatment cost of dog bite cases is high and beyond the reach of many countries. However, now there has been a shift in the rabies elimination and now there is more focus on dog vaccination (both Pet and stray dogs). It is estimated that this cost is many folds less than the treatment of dog bite cases.  Dr Huma Qureshi, ED. PHRC has been nominated as National Focal person for Zoonosis and she is working on Rabies prevention and control in Pakistan.

World Rabies Day:

The World Rabies Day is celebrated in the world on 28th of September 2016. The Global Alliance for Rabies Control this year proposed the theme "Educate, vaccinate, eliminate". PHRC being the focal point for zoonosis in Pakistan is celebrating 28th September as "World Rabies Day".  Information brochure on rabies (preventive measures and what to do in case of dog bite) has been developed and these will be disseminated to general public in Public parks of Islamabad (Daman-e-Koh, Fatima Jinnah Park F9, Shakar Parian and Lake View Park).

Hepatitis

Pakistan has 12 million cases of hepatitis B and C (HBV/HCV) and is therefore highest country in the world to have such a high disease occurrence. Viral hepatitis B and C cause chronic liver disease and its complications and death and is a major concern for Pakistan.

Federal government recognized the importance of disease prevention and took steps towards disease prevention and strategizing its control. Following steps are being undertaken along with some achievements.

1. SOVALDI, the new oral drug for hepatitis C treatment has been registered in Pakistan on fast track and through special negotiations; its cost has been reduced by 99% as compared to that in USA. The drug is being given on special prescription to date but shall be available freely in a week.
2. Birth dose of hepatitis B vaccine has been sorted by making the Provincial program and the Federal EPI sit together and share the resources. The Provincial programs shall procure the vaccine and hand it over to Provincial EPI which shall store it in their cold rooms and give to new born children at health facility through their own EPI worker who also gives BCG and polio on day of delivery. There is no added cost and compliance report shall be sent to hepatitis program.
3. Infection control. Reuse of injections and improper sterilization of medical devices in health care is the major reason for hepatitis spread in Pakistan. These issues come under infection control, therefore WHO in collaboration with Pakistan Health Research Council (PHRC) has developed infection control guidelines, posters, small pocket book in Urdu for each health care provider and also supplied heavy duty WHO approved needle cutters and sharp containers to all BHUs, RHCs, DHQ and THQ of 25 high hepatitis districts of Pakistan. Materials have been sent, trainings done and now monitoring is being done.
4. Hepatitis B and C survey was supported by the federal ministry of health in 2006 to see the exact situation of the disease. The figures of this survey are used on the world maps by WHO, CDC and all partners while referring to hepatitis situation in the world. The survey is widely referred by researchers.
5. Technical Advisory Group (TAG) on hepatitis has been gazette notified by the federal government. It has experts from all Provinces and from WHO and CDC. This group of hepatitis experts’ advice the Federal and Provincial governments on issues related to hepatitis using scientific authentic references and not wishes.

Future strategies

1. Develop viral hepatitis strategy. TAG requested WHO and CDC USA to assist Pakistan in developing viral hepatitis strategy. Both partners agreed and the strategy is being developed in consultation with Provincial hepatitis experts and program.
2. Create awareness about disease. The disease can be tackled once behaviors are changed. Very aggressive media campaigns are being planned to create awareness about risk factors of disease and how to prevent them.
3. Hepatitis C treatment guidelines. Guidelines are being developed through technical support of WHO and CDC to ease diagnosis and treatment of disease.
4. Working together. All related programs like National blood transfusion authority, HIV AIDS, EPI, MNCH etc are being taken on board so that each program handles its component on hepatitis and reports back to program. This will reduce duplication.
5. Creation of Provincial infection control program. Provinces are being sensitized to have infection control program which shall cater for needs of all programs. All hospitals should have active infection control committees with regular monthly meetings with the hospital administration to check compliance to infection control by hospital staff. A cadre of infection control nurse needs to be created to make this functional.

co-amplified renal cell carcinoma: a distinct entity with potential implications for clinical management

A subset of renal cell carcinomas shows TFEB overexpression secondary to MALAT1-TFEB gene fusion. As alternate mechanisms of TFEB overexpression are likely to have the same effect, we sought to determine the frequency of amplification of TFEB and the adjacent VEGFA gene at 6p21.1. As patients with metastatic renal cell carcinomas are managed with anti-VEGF therapies, we retrospectively assessed therapeutic response in patients with amplified tumors. Amplification status was analyzed for 875 renal cell carcinomas from our institution, a consultative case and 794 cases from The Cancer Genome Atlas. Cases were classified as having low level (5–10 copies), and high-level amplification (>10 copies), and were further analyzed for adjacent oncogene copy number status (n=6; 3 single-nucleotide polymorphism genomic microarray, 3 The Cancer Genome Atlas) and structural rearrangements (n=1; mate-pair sequencing). These were then reviewed for histopathology, immunophenotype, and response to VEGF-targeted therapy on follow-up. In all, 10/875 (1.1%) institutional cases, 1 consultative case, and 3/794 (0.4%) of The Cancer Genome Atlas cases showed TFEB high-level amplification, while 14/875 (1.6%) cases showed TFEB low-level amplification. All cases had associated VEGFA amplification. This was confirmed with evaluation for copy number changes (n=6). The 6p21.1 high and low-level amplified tumors occurred in adults (mean age: 66), with over half being ≥pT3 (13/25, 52%), and most showed oncocytic, tubulopapillary features and high grade (≥grade 3: 20/22, 91%). These were aggressive tumors with metastasis and death from renal cell carcinoma in 11 (of 24, 46%) cases. Four patients received targeted therapy and had a mean survival of 31 months (range: 17–50) post nephrectomy. In summary, a group of aggressive renal cell carcinomas show genomic amplification of the 6p21.1 region including TFEB and VEGFA genes and share morphologic features. Additional studies are warranted to determine whether these patients respond to anti-VEGF therapy.