[The decision to breastfeed: grandmother's view] / A decisão de amamentar da nutriz: percepção de sua mãe.

OBJECTIVE: This study is the result of an inquiry into the grandmother's role in the decision as well as the duration of her daughter's choice to breast-feed. METHOD: This project uses a phenomenological theoretical background which leads one to understand breast-feeding based on the view of the grandmother. Thus, this project analyzes the discourse of 10 women by using the following guiding questions: Howdid you feed your children when they were born? What did you think about your daughter's choice to breast-feed? Why do you think your daughter decided to breast-feed? RESULTS: The analysis of the discourses as a whole reveals that for these women breast-feeding is something intrinsical to a mother's role as well as an experience transferred from mothers to daughters. This project also reveals that breast-feeding is a family tradition which can be influenced by advice and support. CONCLUSION: From this perspective, a new focus is revealed by giving advice, supporting and encouraging breast-feeding.

The invasive behaviour of Cryptococcus neoformans: a possibility of direct access to the central nervous system?

Cryptococcocal meningoencephalitis is always considered secondary to initial lung infection. Because of the unquestionable evidence of haematogenious spread from the lungs, few publications have reported about other possible primary sites of infection or other routes to the central nervous system. This study was designed to investigate the infiltrative pattern of C. neoformans in immunocompromised mice by treatment with dexamethasone. The infection was performed by nasal instillation (30 mice) or injection into the retro-orbital space (12 mice). From the group infected intranasally, 3 mice presented diffuse invasive fungal colonisation of the mucosa and submucosa. The histologic findings showed infiltrative growth along the periosteum, sometimes surrounded nervous endings of submucosa, invasion along the olfactory nerve and simultaneous meningeal involvement in 2 mice on the 6th and 8th day of infection. All mice infected into the retro-ocular space developed lesions containing numerous cryptococci in the local of the inoculum. Out of the main lesion we observed preferential growth along the perineural spaces with adherence to the perineurium, perivascular spaces and sometimes along aponeurosis. Simultaneous invasion of trigeminal ganglio and trigeminal branches was observed in 4 mice. These morphologic patterns suggest the hypothesis of direct infiltrative invasion of the central nervous system.