crohns disease and breast lumps....

[jo1402]

Hi I am very new to this so please forgive me if my question seems daft. I have suffered fron crohns disease for 27 yrs and have a perm ileostomy. 11 years ago I had a breast lumpremoved thankfully not cancer. I have since found 3 new lumpswith 2 being in my armpit. I attended a consultant app today and told that there is a link between crohns and breast lumps. I have never heard ths before, nor has my gastro consultant told me about this!!!! Anyway, as I am 38 years old and have been told " you are too young to have BC" I was given an ultrasound this afternoon. This flagged up that I have no less than 6 lumps. After being almost dismissed prior to the ultrasound by the consultant for being too young, he said well well well so you have 6 lumps in total... I am now awaiting another date to go back into x ray so that needle biopsies on all 6 lumps can be conducted, I am angry at todays result as \i have been to my GP several times complaining of lumps and have been told to go away! He never mentined the relationship of crohns to breast lumps. I am left tonight stunned and baffled as no 2 people are saying the same thing just now. can anyone help? In all the time i have had crohns never has it been mentioned and I feel cheated. Anyone know  anything that can help my confusion??? Thank you for reading my thoughts tonight.Joanne x

[Cleveland Clinic]

Dear Joanne:  I am unable to find any reference to any relationship between crohn’s disease and breast lumps.  There are many possible explanations for breast lumps, hopefully the surgeon or radiologist will be able to shed some light on this for you.

[lizziecee]

Hi Joanne,

As a Crohn's patient of some 38 yrs (dx when I was 26 yrs) and a breast cancer patient of 6 yrs, I too wondered if there was a connection between the 2 diseases. Both my Oncologist and Gastroenterologist say they have never heard or read of a connection...BUT....my own research has shown that females of Eastern European Ashkenazi Jewish descent, have higher than average occurrences of both diseases. Indeed when I was dx with Crohn's I was asked if I had "any Jewish blood"....I responded not to my knowledge. Every gastro I have seen over the years has asked the same question. Recently my elder sister told me she believes our maternal grandfather was Jewish, but the town where he was brought up in England was bombed during WWII and the synagogue razed to the ground. All records were lost. He was separated from my grandmother, so we have little family information on his side.

If you google "Crohn's" I vaguely recollect the Mayo Clinic website mentioning a Jewish Ashkenazi prevalence. The Ashkenazi Jews left Eastern Europe during the pogroms of the 1800/1900's and emigrated to Western Europe and the Americas.

As far as your lumps go, let us pray they are benign tumours.  However, they could be malignant and you are doing the right things by having them biopsied. My non palpable tumour was found at a normal 3 yrly mammogram when I was 58 yrs and unfortunately had spread to the lymph nodes in my right armpit (axilla). I do feel that if we had annual mammos in England (is this where you live as you use the nomenclature "GP", rather than PCP as Americans do?) that my cancer would possibly not have spread.

However, I am currently NED (no evidence of disease), the best 3 words in the English language to a cancer patient! I can't say the treatment was a walk in the park - a Wide Local Excision of the tumour and 8 sample nodes removed...2 were malignant so I had to go back for total axillary removal and another node was found positive. 6 gruelling FEC chemotherapy treatments and 6 weeks of daily radiotherapy. As my tumour was ER positive, I am taking an aromatose inhibitor, Femara, to prevent a recurrence.

My Cohn's has been harder to deal with than breast cancer....I am seeing a private gastro surgeon on the 17th Nov prior to partial resection of th terminal ileum, and stricturplasty on various strictures in the small intestine. I self inject 25 mg of methotrexate weekly, for the Crohn's, and am hoping after the forthcoming surgery will be free of Cohn's drugs. My weight has plummeted in 4 months to 98 lbs and I can't eat any solid food, so existing on Fortijuice enteral drinks at present.

If you do find any connection between Crohn's and breast cancer, I would be grateful to hear from you.

Wishing you a benign diagnosis.
Take care,
Liz (Medhelp Crohn's Community Leader)

[lizziecee]

P.S.
Not sure how to send you a private message, but will try and get my email address through:
tedark at aol *******.

Just remembered, when I was dx with bc, neither my Oncologist nor Gastroenterologist had dealt with a patient with concurrent diseases - I was in a flare when dx and the Oncologist said I had to stop the methorexate, otherwise I would die of septicaemia, but had no advice on how we would deal with the Crohn's during the 6 months of chemo. I emailed every major hospital in the USA and UK I could think of, asking how they would treat the concurrent diseases. They all replied, but only one had any advice - St. Marks Hospital in Harrow, Middlesex, England, which is a dedicated IBD hospital. A Professor of Gastroenterology said he would prescribe prednisolone along with the FEC drugs, but as I had a steroid induced psychosis when dx with bc, this was not an option in my case.  I changed Oncologists and saw a lovely young female...somehow we worked out a plan - a small daily dose of dexamethasone (a steroid, but quite different to pred) and daily Fortijuice drinks, and reduced doses of chemo.  I was virtually housebound as I was faecally incontinent and only left home to go for my treatments.  So happy now that the bc has not recurred, but am under no illusion it can rear its' ugly head at any time, especially with my prognosis.

Liz.