ET

In sickness and in health (Filed: 12/06/2001)

Floating kidneys and septic teeth resurface, by Dr James Le Fanu

IT is a great misfortune to be afflicted by an illness that has long since gone out of fashion - such as "floating kidney". The case of the floating kidney is a much-cited example of a "non-disease", where doctors deceived themselves into believing their patients' vague symptoms were due to the effect of gravity on the kidney, such that, on standing, it floated downwards.

The cure, everyone agreed, was to fix the kidney in place by putting a stitch through its wall and hitching it up to some nearby muscle. Back in the 1920s and 1930s such operations were common, averaging 20 a year at Glasgow Royal Infirmary alone. Then quite suddenly it went out of fashion.

But now we learn that floating kidney does exist after all - causing, according to David Hoenig, a urologist in New York, intermittent chronic pains in the flank, which resolve when the kidney is manipulated back into its proper position. The symptoms have been attributed to a variety of different mechanisms, including the blocking of urinary flow, traction on the nerves and kinking of the blood vessels, but the important thing is that when the kidney is fixed to the stitch - just as they used to do 80 years ago - the cure rate is an astonishing 100 per cent.

Simultaneously, yet another unfashionable diagnosis - focal sepsis - has also been rehabilitated. In the early part of the 20th century focal sepsis, or localised infection, usually of the teeth, was held to account for many illnesses, including rheumatism, gastritis, sclerosis, pernicious anaemia and so on. Here again the solution was obvious enough: total dental extraction. One by one, the proper cause of these diseases was identified - for example, pernicious anaemia being due to vitamin B12 deficiency - and so, like floating kidney, "focal sepsis" disappeared from the medical textbooks.

Rightly so, one might think; but hidden dental infection can be responsible for otherwise mysterious symptoms, as a gentleman from Torquay describes. "Early in 1996 my wife became very lethargic and depressed," he writes. "She had all the usual tests, which revealed nothing, but an acquaintance remarked that he had had a similar problem in the past, which was eventually traced to a septic tooth. Sure enough, my wife's dentist found an abscess under an upper molar, which was duly removed and her lethargy rapidly cleared."

Further to readers' fortuitous discoveries of medical cures, not enough time has elapsed to assess whether the gin-and-raisin remedy for arthritis might also, as has been claimed, clear psoriasis - but Mrs P.C. from Bristol writes to tell of another remedy for the same condition.

She had had the misfortune to suffer from psoriasis for 30 years, until late last year when, "as a matter of convenience to accommodate the preference of some guests", she changed from her customary healthy brown wholemeal bread to the white sliced variety.

Over the next 12 weeks her psoriasis "gradually faded in intensity", before it disappeared altogether.

Another coincidence? Not necessarily. Mrs P.C. has by chance stumbled on something that has only recently been reported: a proportion of those with psoriasis test positive for the gut disorder coeliac disease, due to wheat sensitivity, which improves with a gluten-free diet. Admittedly, Mrs C.P. had only switched from wholemeal to white bread, but her psoriasis must be presumed to have been due to sensitivity to something in the wheat germ that is lost in refining.

While researching this further, I came across another fortuitously discovered but long-forgotten treatment for psoriasis. This, by amazing coincidence, turns out to be the same drug, cholestyramine, whose near-miraculous effect on some of those with irritable bowel syndrome and diverticulitis recently featured in this column.

Again, it does not work for all, but nearly 20 years ago, Dr Robert Skinner, a dermatologist from Memphis, reported the "striking clearing of the psoriasis skin rash" in five patients, within 10 days of starting cholestyramine (one sachet four times a day).

And here are a couple more. Mrs M.C. from Warwickshire has, every summer for the past 44 years, suffered an unusual variation of sun-induced psoriasis. "However, this summer my psoriasis is practically gone and I can go out in the sunshine - thanks to taking two 650mg capsules of concentrated omega 3 pure fish oil throughout the winter. The results are a miracle."

There are, indeed, several reports on the value of fish oils but none, to my knowledge, for Royal Jelly, which another reader claims has kept his skin free of psoriasis for 18 months.

So here we have four more possibilities to add to the gin and raisins - and, with such an embarras de richesses, it seems sensible to give each a trial for one month and see what happens. I would be very interested to hear from readers which, if any, "does the business".

-- Anonymous, June 17, 2001