Hi Molly,

Amazingly, I have seen 3 cases of this now. Dr. Karen Bodnar was the person who id'd the condition for my first case, and she did the medical management side of things. I've done a literature search and plan to write up these cases soon. What I learned is that this seems to be an autoimmune issue that happens in women who have breastfed before. Antibiotics don't really work because it isn't bacterial. One of the ways it has been managed in the past is surgery to remove the affected areas, but of the mothers I've seen, that didn't really arrest it and they ended up with some degree of disfigurement of the breasts.  The abscesses seem to be very damaging to breast tissue; the two mothers I worked closely with produced very little on the affected side, one who was in active breakout and the other who was not...  



Steroids seem to help one mother, while another mother who was not active at the time I met her described being seen by 4 different specialists and trying many different things with little improvement until she stumbled upon manuka honey (I can't remember the who or why of it)-- I want to say she ingested 1 tablespoon a day. She believes that it helped get things under control and her last specialist supported it. I remember that she had one "destroyed" breast and the other side had what looked like the start of a new abscess... I told her to get back on that manuka honey, what did we have to lose? She never broke out on that side, and she was able to fully breastfeed from the remaining good breast.



Hope this helps.



~Lisa Marasco



             ***********************************************



Archives: http://community.lsoft.com/archives/LACTNET.html

To reach list owners: [log in to unmask]

Mail all list management commands to: [log in to unmask]

COMMANDS:

1. To temporarily stop your subscription write in the body of an email: set lactnet nomail

2. To start it again: set lactnet mail

3. To unsubscribe: unsubscribe lactnet

4. To get a comprehensive list of rules and directions: get lactnet welcome