Prolactinoma Support Group
A prolactinoma is a benign tumor of the pituitary gland that produces a hormone called prolactin. It is the most common type of pituitary tumor. Symptoms of prolactinoma are caused by too much prolactin in the blood or by pressure of the tumor on surrounding tissues. Prolactin stimulates the breast to produce milk during pregnancy. After delivery of the baby, a mother's...
Was your pituitary disease caused by head trauma?
Our son committed suicide in August last year, and we think we know why.
When he was seven he fell from a tree and fractured his skull. He was unconscious for five days and we were afraid we would lose him, but amazingly, he recovered. He seemed to develop normally in his teens, yet after his death we discovered that he had never managed full sex with his girlfriend in all their four years together. This was something we'd never dreamed of. We knew he'd had depression, especially when she left him six years ago, but we never imagined this.
Searching for an explanation, we found research showing that a quarter of moderate/severe traumatic brain injury survivors will have pituitary damage. The problems may not start straight away, in fact the onset may come years later. There were cases where diagnosis was delayed by 42 years. Mild brain injury, we found, can sometimes cause hypopituitarism too - sometimes so mild that the person has forgotten it and has to be reminded by relatives. The symptoms vary, but frequently include loss of libido and infertility, and associated depression. And it's treatable!
You are more than three times more likely to commit suicide if you've had a head injury. We wish we'd known.
We collected more and more research, eventually filling two fat lever arch files. Yet, amazingly, we found that most hospitals and doctors still do not realise the risk, or screen patients' hormone levels. We have spent the past year emailing and phoning, and things are slowly starting to change. But this doesn't help people like our son who slipped through the net in the past.
Do you think your pituitary disease may have been caused by an earlier head trauma, even one many years ago?
Note
Here is some research on the topic.
http://jama.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/full/298/12/1429
Our son committed suicide in August last year, and we think we know why.
When he was seven he fell from a tree and fractured his skull. He was unconscious for five days and we were afraid we would lose him, but amazingly, he recovered. He seemed to develop normally in his teens, yet after his death we discovered that he had never managed full sex with his girlfriend in all their four years together. This was something we'd never dreamed of. We knew he'd had depression, especially when she left him six years ago, but we never imagined this.
Searching for an explanation, we found research showing that a quarter of moderate/severe traumatic brain injury survivors will have pituitary damage. The problems may not start straight away, in fact the onset may come years later. There were cases where diagnosis was delayed by 42 years. Mild brain injury, we found, can sometimes cause hypopituitarism too - sometimes so mild that the person has forgotten it and has to be reminded by relatives. The symptoms vary, but frequently include loss of libido and infertility, and associated depression. And it's treatable!
You are more than three times more likely to commit suicide if you've had a head injury. We wish we'd known.
We collected more and more research, eventually filling two fat lever arch files. Yet, amazingly, we found that most hospitals and doctors still do not realise the risk, or screen patients' hormone levels. We have spent the past year emailing and phoning, and things are slowly starting to change. But this doesn't help people like our son who slipped through the net in the past.
Do you think your pituitary disease may have been caused by an earlier head trauma, even one many years ago?
Note
Here is some research on the topic.
http://jama.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/full/298/12/1429
she never did have any sort of head trauma.
My sympathies to you for the loss of your son,
she was finally diagnosed because on her well
child visit to the pediatrician I stated again
for probrably the 10th time that she was almost 16 and never got her period, this was a new female doctor who decided to run some tests, the blood tests showed a prolactin leverl of 367 and we went from there. I feel
that all doctors should run bloodwork on teens once they enter puberty. I think this would tell alot, if I had had a son we probrably would not have found out about a
prolactinoma until he lost vision if he didn't complain about anything. Good luck
And I'm so sorry about your depression icall. Not only did our son suffer in that way, but my mother-in-law has now got it, she's trying sertraline and we're hoping it will work. Depression can isolate you terribly, because most people don't understand. I wish I'd understood how our son felt, he didn't complain enough.
My cousin picked me up, flung me over her shoulder, and lost her grip on my legs. I slid, face first, down her back and landed on my forehead on concrete.
It drove my head backward, toward my tailbone, and the doctors...I think...were quietly astounded that my neck did not break and that I should have died...right there in the back yard of my childhood home.
I don't understand why I survived.
Your theory is interesting.
I'm so sorry to hear of all those long years you spent without a diagnosis. It sounds as though your adenoma was growing since you were 8, and your whole life was made miserable by your symptoms. I'm glad everything is reasonably under control now. I agree that pituitary disease needs to be publicized much much more and I'm glad you are telling people. Good luck!
Best wishes Linda
It's a long time since you posted this, but I'm writing to ask if you would mind if I included your story in our website on http://www.headinjuryhypo.org.uk Please contact me through the website if you would like this to happen, and if you would like to include more detail, 'Caroline Churchill' (Joanna Lane)
I have no problem with you using my history on the web site, the more people are aware the better.
Regards Linda
First off I had a bad head injury when I was a young girl but I never got any symptons like lost periods and breast discharges until I was married in my 20's. I had taken the birth control pill and about 2 years later had a blod clot in the brain. And right around that time they found what they thought was a adenoma in the head but turned out to be a empty sella which I think might have been caused by this blod clot in the brain. Because I had this clot in my head for quite some weeks with bad headaches thinking it was a sinus problem. It could have done some damage. I don't know for sure of course but I am trying to figure out how my came about. I hit my head bad too in my 20's in Macys on a shelf that was clear and no clothes on it. I think back and there would have been a good lawsuit there. Nevertheless I do think some kind of head drama/injury can cuase these pituatary problems.
I to suffered many head trauma's, when I was a child. As a toddler I fell from the top floor to the bottom floor, on my head of our two storey house. Then at the age of ten I stuck a stick in my bike wheel and flip it over landing on my head, I know the things we do as children!!lol
There has not been enough research to prove that this is how our condition is caused. I know though as your son did suffer from horrible depression, that if I had not been diagnosed, I would have taken my own life. It is a horrible thing to say, but the depression was so bad, it honestly felt like I was slowly going crazy, and every doctor that I went to, would tell me there was knowthing wrong, that it was all in my head. The only reason they even found my tumor was because I was lactating, if I had not confided in my mother at the time I would not be here today.