Paget’s disease is the second most common bone disease. Paget’s disease is a chronic bone disorder that is due to irregular breakdown and formation of bone tissue.The disease occurs worldwide, but is more common in Europe, Australia, and New Zealand — where it is seen in up to 5% of the elderly population. Paget’s disease can cause bones to expand and weaken and may result in bone pain, arthritis, bone deformity and fractures. Men and women are approximately equally affected. The prevalence of Paget’s disease ranges from 1.5 to 8% depending on age and country of residence. The prevalence of familial Paget’s disease (where more than one family member has the disease) ranges from 10 to 40% in different parts of the world. It is usually localized to one bone, but can involve many bones. The actual cause of Paget’s disease is not known. Paget’s disease is also known as osteitis deformans. The disease may localize to one or two areas within the skeleton, or become widespread. Frequently, bones of the pelvis, leg, spine, arm, or the collar bone are involved. The effect on the skull may enlarge head size and cause hearing loss, if the cranial nerves are damaged by the bone growth.

Paget’s disease may affect only one or two areas of your body, or may be widespread. Paget’s disease tends to appear in families. It can be present in as many as 25 percent to 40 percent of the relatives of someone with the disease. It is also more common in people of Anglo-Saxon descent. Many patients do not know they have Paget’s disease because they have a mild case with no symptoms. Sometimes, symptoms may be confused with those of arthritis or other disorders. Symptoms can arise from the effect on calcium levels in the blood stream. When Paget’s disease is active in several bones, the overactive osteoclasts can release enough calcium from the bone as they break it down to cause an elevated calcium level in the blood. This rare complication might cause fatigue, weakness, loss of appetite, abdominal pain, or constipation. A doctor can also detect Paget’s disease from its effect on the heart if excess blood supply is shunted to overactive bones in severe cases. When pain is severe and unrelenting in an area affected by Paget’s disease, the disease may have degenerated into a bone cancer. Paget’s sarcoma (Figure 6) occurs in only about 1 percent of patients with Paget’s disease. These patients are usually older than 70 years of age. This type of malignant bone tumor is very aggressive and carries a poor prognosis.

Paget’s disease occurs most frequently in the spine, skull, pelvis, thighs, and lower legs. Paget’s disease may be caused by a slow virus infection (i.e., paramyxoviruses such as measles and respiratory syncytial virus). Paget’s disease of bone, though they have discovered several genes that appear to be linked to the disorder. Hereditary factors seem to influence whether you’re susceptible to the disease. Environmental factors may also play a role. Several studies have postulated that viruses, particularly paramyxoviruses such as canine distemper or measles virus, play a role in pathogenesis, but definitive evidence for this is lacking. Presumably, the declining incidence of Paget’s disease reflects a decline in one or more as yet unidentified environmental influences. The SQSTM1/p62 protein is a selective activator of the transcription factor NFB, which plays an important role in osteoclast differentiation and activation in response to the cytokines RANK-ligand and interleukin-1.Mutations in the SQSTM1/p62 gene are therefore a plausible cause of Paget’s disease. Germline DNA mutations (present in every osteoclast) cause bone disease that is focal in nature.

Medical are generally treating Paget’s disease. Treatment include is aspirin, other anti-inflammatory medications, pain medications, and medications that slow the rate of bone turnover, such as calcitonin (Calcimar, Miacalcin), etidronate (Didronel), alendronate (Fosamax), and pamidronate (Aredia). Surgery is used mainly to treat the complications of Paget’s disease. A newer drug, risedronate (Actonel), appears to have a powerful effect against severe Paget’s disease. Miacalcin is administered by injection; 50 to 100 units daily or 3 times per week for 6-18 months. Didronel (etidronate disodium) — Tablet; approved regimen is 200-400 mg once daily for 6 months; the higher dose (400 mg) is more commonly used; no food, beverages, or medications for 2 hours before and after taking. Fosamax (alendronate sodium) — Tablet; 40 mg once daily for 6 months; patients should wait at least 30 minutes after taking before eating any food, drinking anything other than tap water, taking any medication, or lying down (patient may sit). Eating a healthy diet with sufficient calcium and vitamin D and getting exercise are important components in maintaining skeletal health and joint mobility.

This is the Official Vasculitis Awareness Theme Song composed and performed by Andrea Pittini. Vasculitis is a rare disease that affects the blood vessels, if not diagnosed in time it could lead to death. The Vasculitis Awareness Week it’s your opportunity to learn more about this family of rare diseases: visit www.vasculitisfoundation.org and take action! Support scientific research and spread the word about Vasculitis. Purchase the song on iTunes anytime of the year and revenues will be donated to the Vasculitis Foundation. Please include: www.greatplaymusic.com if you embed this video on your page / blog

Last summer, one of my friends mothers died of a rare disease.
Since then, she’s drifted apart from a lot of our friends, and spends a lot more time just staring into space. I’ll notice her at lunch blankly staring at the wall.
Whenever I’m around her, im careful not to mention my mother, but the more that i try not to, the more i seem to and the more my friends do as well.
I dont know what else i can do. I’ve tried talking to her, but she’s just not the same. Its been over a year, but i’d still like to know…What else can I do?

This investigation began when through my researches for my book I could demonstrate that all cancers can readily be linked to chemical and radiation causes, but there is one that was an exception. It was the cuckoo in the nest and this was cervical cancer. This cancer variation is now firmly established and universally attributed to having been caused by a virus as many of the articles in this Ezine more than testify. However, the evidence proves otherwise and I shall prove beyond any doubt that what I have said is true but before proceeding with the evidence to support this heretical statement, let us take a look at some background information about the disease. Clues to the cause of the disease can be found within the information that now follows.

Worldwide, cervical cancer is the third most common type of cancer in women. According to the NCCC (National Cervical Cancer Coalition) about 14,000 women in the United States are diagnosed with the disease each year and more than 3,900 women die in each year from this disease. However, the number of women getting the disease in the western world is very few when compared to the rest of the world. Women in developing countries account for about 85% of both the yearly cases of cervical cancer (estimated at 493,000 cases worldwide) and the yearly deaths from cervical cancer (estimated at 273,500 deaths worldwide). In fact, whereas breast cancer is the leading cancer for women in the west, in the majority of developing countries, cervical cancer remains the number-one cause of cancer-related deaths among women. Keep these statistics in mind because what they tell us is very important as far as determining the cause of cervical cancer is concerned.

Initially I was taken aback by the revelation that a virus caused cervical cancer but then I began to wonder what it was that led the medical profession to almost unanimously adopt this idea when all other cancers clearly showed that chemicals (or radiation) was responsible. As I looked into this more deeply, I came across a most perplexing riddle. You see, what set doctors along a path in search of a viral cause of the disease was triggered by an obscure report in a regional medical journal in Venice. It was made by an Italian surgeon and an amateur epidemiolist named Rigoni-Stern in 1842. He had analysed 150,000 death certificates from the Veronese district for the years 1760-1839 and found that out of 74,184 women who died, 1288 of them were nuns. The cause of death of the nuns varied but many had died of breast cancer, five times more common than other women. Incidently, he correctly attributed one of the reasons for the increase in breast cancer in nuns compared to other women was due to the corsets they wore). He recorded four deaths from uterine cancer (cervical cancer was not distinguished from other cancers of the uterus), while he had expected at least six based on 361 cases in the remaining 72,896 women.

From this somewhat vague analysis, others saw this data as evidence that there was little or no cervical cancer among Catholic nuns compared with the rest of the Italian female population. Subsequent doctors endeavoured to expand on this obscure report, adding various invented details, including the idea that cervical cancer in prostitutes was prevalent. So arose the myth that as nuns were supposed to be celibate and yet cervical cancer was rare among them, and that the disease was said to be quite common among prostitutes this could only mean one thing. Cervical cancer was caused by something that was sexually transmitted and it was not long before this speculation became accepted as fact. Professor Skranbanek put things in perspective when he said that, “A reference to an obscure Italian communication has become a de riguer in the opening paragraphs of articles on the aetiology of cervical cancer, but how many authors have read the orignal? Skranbanek, proved as did Dr Griffiths of Luton Hospital, that the basis upon which the theory that a sexually transmitted virus was a red herring, that has led to doctors following a false trail ever since.

For a hundred years or more the search for the elusive virus was searched for, with Smegma and Herpes at one time thought to have been the cause, but eventually proven to be unfounded. Then came along Professor Harald zur Hausen and his team who found that a number of HPV virus strains could be found in women who had cervical cancer. The elusive virus had been found and ever since then, this has become the established scientific hypothesis. But is wrong!

If HPV does not cause cervical cancer as I have said, even though most if not all of the medical profession would disagree with me, then what do I say is the cause of the disease? To answer this question we need first to take a look at the intriguing statistic that I mentioned earlier in this treatise, because it gives us a vital clue. “Women in developing countries account for about 85% of both the yearly cases of cervical cancer”.

Did you know that the Office of Rare Diseases (ORD) of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in the United States lists cervical cancer as a “rare disease”? This means that Cervical Cancer, or a subtype of the disease, affects less than 200,000 people in the United States, a country that has a population of over 300 million people. According to the estimated new cases and deaths from cervical (uterine cervix) cancer in the United States in 2007 by the National Cancer Institute are 11,150 new cases with deaths about 3,650. This compares to 470,000 new cases and 230,000 deaths every year to cervical cancer world wide, most of which occur in developing countries. The good news is that cervical cancer incidents are on the decline in the West and it is believed that the introduction of the Pap test is responsible. This may be partially true, but how does one explain that cervical cancer was already in decline before the Pap test was introduced?

The World Health Organisation says that “More than 80% of the burden of this easily detectable and preventable disease is borne by developing countries” To illustrate this the WHO have published a map of the world that shows the projected global incidence of cervical cancer for 2005 in various countries, and it is most informative. The reason I say this is because I have seen an almost exact duplicate of this map elsewhere, accept that it has nothing to do with cervical cancer. It is a map that shows the national energy consumption of wood fuels in the world. The correlation is remarkable and self evident. OVERLAY THE STATISTICAL WORLD MAP OF CERVICAL CANCER DISTRIBUTION AND A MAP OF THE COUNTRIES THAT USE WOOD AS THEIR PRIMARY FUEL AND YOU WILL FIND AN ALMOST PERFECT MATCH…. This is no coincidence.

Thank you

Fred Harding

Author and Historian