Breast Cancer

Manny Hamelburg, 68, a retired businessman, had fought prostate cancer for years. First, he tried radiation, then a drug with side effects that nearly killed him, and finally Lupron, a drug that blocks production of testosterone, the hormone that can fuel prostate cancer. The cancer disappeared. But life was miserable. Without normal levels of testosterone, Hamelburg says, he had no energy, and "zero libido for seven years. I was like a eunuch. I was chemically castrated. Sex was just hugs."

For postmenopausal women who are obese, breast cancer is more likely. That's because fat tissue seems to behave essentially as an organ of the endocrine system, pumping out the hormone estrogen. And estrogen is a driver of many common breast cancers. But losing as little as 5% of one's body weight - 10 pounds for a 200-pound woman - drives down levels of estrogen and other hormones that raise breast cancer risk, a new study finds. In combination with weight loss, exercise drove down hormone levels even more, an effect that is likely to reduce a woman's risk of developing breast cancer.

Survivors of breast cancer may want to watch their post-diagnosis weight -- a study finds that women who gain a large amount of weight may be at greater risk of cancer recurrence and death. The study, being presented at the American Assn. for Cancer Research's meeting this week in Orlando, Fla., followed breast-cancer survivors in three groups from the United States and one from China. Women who gained 10% or more than their pre-diagnosis weight were 14% more likely to have the disease return compared with women whose weight stayed fairly steady, within 5% of their pre-diagnosis weight.

SAN MARCOS, Calif. —When paramedics arrived at the Purdy home March 20, Margaret was seated in her favorite chair in the living room. The morning sunshine streamed in through a picture window that overlooked a valley. A plastic bag was over her head, tied securely at the neck. A suicide note in her handwriting was in a folder on her desk, beneath a shelf with books about death and dying. She had written that the pain from her various medical conditions had become unbearable. Alan Purdy met the paramedics at the door.

A friend just told me that she has breast cancer and will be having surgery soon. I am sad but not surprised. More American women have died of breast cancer in the past two decades than all Americans killed in both World Wars, Korea and Vietnam. And the victims are getting younger. My friend is posturing as a warrior instead of resigning to being a statistic. Investigating causes and treatments, she learned that pesticides used on a field near her job site are known to cause cancer and accumulate in the fatty tissue of breasts.

Christina Applegate is undergoing treatment for breast cancer, but the disease was caught early and the actress is expected to fully recover, her publicist said. The Emmy winner's cancer was detected through an MRI ordered by a doctor and is not life-threatening, publicist Ame Van Iden said. Applegate is scheduled to appear on a one-hour television special "Stand Up to Cancer," to be aired on ABC, CBS and NBC Sept. 5 to raise funds for cancer research. The 36-year-old actress has been nominated for an Emmy and a Golden Globe for the show "Samantha Who?

Cynthia Nixon has joined forces with the breast cancer organization Susan G. Komen for the Cure and is going public with her own battle with breast cancer. Nixon, who is reprising her role as Miranda in HBO's "Sex and the City" in an upcoming movie, had a lumpectomy two years ago and then underwent 6 1/2 weeks of radiation. She also helped her mother battle breast cancer. Nixon will serve as an ambassador for the Dallas-based Komen organization and will share her cancer experiences in a series of Web videos.

For almost a decade, American women, along with their families and friends, have marched, run, hiked and even climbed mountains in the name of breast-cancer "awareness. " They have affixed pink ribbons to their lapels or worn special breast-cancer-themed garments like the Ralph Lauren pink pony T-shirt. They have distributed and displayed hundreds of breast cancer-related tschotchkes, from pink teddy bears to breast cancer awareness bank checks. One goal of all this activism has been to raise money for breast-cancer research, but the larger, more diffuse, aim is always "awareness": getting out the message that "early detection saves lives" and that the best means of detection is the annual screening mammogram, or, as Rosie O'Donnell puts it, going out and getting "squished.

Christina Applegate is taking the long view of her battle with breast cancer -- the really long view. Speaking on ABC News' "Good Morning America" in her first interview since announcing her diagnosis earlier this month, the "Samantha Who?" star said she had a double mastectomy three weeks ago. She'll undergo reconstructive surgery over the next eight months. "I'm going to have cute boobs 'til I'm 90, so there's that," she joked in the interview, which aired Tuesday. The 36-year-old actress elected to remove both breasts even though the disease was contained in one breast.

Breast cancer survivors needn't worry about eating soy, according to a new study presented at the American Assn. for Cancer Research in Orlando this week. Fears that the isoflavone chemicals found in soy -- which have estrogen-like properties -- might raise the risk of cancer recurrence seem unfounded. The conclusion comes from a large study compiling data from more than 18,000 women diagnosed with invasive breast cancer; an average of nine years after diagnosis, no statistical difference was seen between groups of women who ate a lot of soy and those who ate very little, both with regard to either recurrence of the cancers or death.

A new study of the protein-coding genes in 100 breast cancer tumors revealed vast differences among the cancers and highlights how complicated the disease really is, researchers said Wednesday.  “A sobering perspective on the complexity and diversity of the disease is emerging,” they wrote in the online edition of the journal Nature (subscription required), which is publishing a series of studies of the genetic changes in breast cancer. The scientists, led by Michael Stratton at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute in Hinxton, England, found 73 different combinations of disease-causing mutations in the tumors, each involving up to six different genes from a set of 40 “driver genes.”  Seven of the 40 individual driver genes were mutated in more than 10% of cases, but 33 others that were less common also contributed to the development of the cancers, the team reported.  In 28 cases, a single mutation was enough to cause disease.  The researchers identified nine new genes that caused the cancers, and also found mutations in genes that were already known to cause breast and other cancers.

After several years of upheaval over the best way to conduct breast cancer screening, researchers are working to find clarity over when women should begin getting mammograms, how often and at what cost. A pair of new studies clears up some of the uncertainty by finding that women who have a mother or sister diagnosed with breast cancer, or those who have unusually dense breast tissue, should have their first test at age 40 and repeat the exam at least once every other year. For these women, who face at least twice the average risk of developing breast cancer in their 40s, the benefits of routine screening between the ages of 40 and 49 outweigh the risk of false alarms and unnecessary work-ups that might otherwise put them at greater risk than doing nothing, researchers report in Tuesday's edition of Annals of Internal Medicine.

Brachytherapy is an increasingly popular option for women with early-stage breast cancer. After a lumpectomy to remove abnormal tissue, doctors insert either a series of tubes or a catheter attached to a small balloon into the breast. A radioactive source is then delivered to the surgical site, where it can kill off any remaining cancer cells within about 1 centimeter. After five days of treatment, the tubes or catheter can be removed. As this site from UCLA's Department of Radiation Oncology explains, brachytherapy allows doctors to irradiate the breast “from the inside out,” unlike the traditional method of applying radiation to the entire breast with an external beam.

Researchers have called it the “Hispanic paradox”: When it comes to breast cancer, prostate cancer and heart disease, Latino patients in the U.S. survive longer after diagnosis than their non-Latino white and black counterparts  - even though studies have found they tend to have fewer resources and less access to care than non-Latino whites. It's the same for lung cancer, said scientists at the Miller School of Medicine at the University of Miami in a paper published online Monday by the journal Cancer .  Querying a vast database that tracks U.S. cancer cases, the researchers looked at 172,398 patients diagnosed with non-small cell lung cancer, a common subtype of the disease, in the U.S. from 1988 to 2007.

Bill and Giuliana Rancic, whose struggles with fertility have been well documented on their reality show, "Giuliana & Bill," had some good news to share Monday: They're expecting a baby. "It's incredible," Giuliana said on the "Today" show. "We've been trying for so long, we've been through so much, and, especially we just had such a hard year last year with the breast cancer and everything and to finally get that call from the doctor of, you're pregnant -- or, you're having a baby!

Researchers have found a way to classify breast cancer tumors into 10 distinct categories ranging from very treatable to extremely aggressive, a major step on the way to the long-sought goal of precisely targeting therapies for patients. The new categories, described in a study released Wednesday, should help scientists devise fresh approaches to treat some of the cancers and could spare many women the risks and pain of unnecessarily toxic treatments, oncologists said. "If you belong to one group you'll need one therapy, and if you're in another you'll need another," said Dr. Carlos Caldas, a breast cancer geneticist at the University of Cambridge in England who helped oversee the research.

A new study of the protein-coding genes in 100 breast cancer tumors revealed vast differences among the cancers and highlights how complicated the disease really is, researchers said Wednesday.  “A sobering perspective on the complexity and diversity of the disease is emerging,” they wrote in the online edition of the journal Nature (subscription required), which is publishing a series of studies of the genetic changes in breast cancer. The scientists, led by Michael Stratton at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute in Hinxton, England, found 73 different combinations of disease-causing mutations in the tumors, each involving up to six different genes from a set of 40 “driver genes.”  Seven of the 40 individual driver genes were mutated in more than 10% of cases, but 33 others that were less common also contributed to the development of the cancers, the team reported.  In 28 cases, a single mutation was enough to cause disease.  The researchers identified nine new genes that caused the cancers, and also found mutations in genes that were already known to cause breast and other cancers.

In a study suggesting that red wine might be the next big thing in breast cancer prevention, a study has found that women who drank just under two servings of red wine daily experienced hormonal changes that mimic the effects of a drug used to prevent malignant breast tumors from coming back. The study, published Friday in the Journal of Women's Health, found that consuming the same amount of white wine did not have the same effect in premenopausal women participating in the study.

After a tumultous and short-lived breakup between the two nonprofits in February, Susan G. Komen for the Cure is sending grant money Planned Parenthood's way. At least 17 Planned Parenthood affiliates will be receiving funding from their local Komen organizations, according to a report out in the Washington Post. The move comes as the breast cancer foundation continues to reforge ties after an unsuccessful attempt to stop funding the sexual and reproductive healthcare provider's breast-health services.

There's an intimacy that passes when someone drives you from the Eastside to LAX during rush hour. The act of generosity, the panic of traffic and the fact that any wrong turn can lead to a missed flight is almost romantic. Perhaps this is what leads me to tell my neighbor a story about my mom as we drive to LAX. It's the most serious conversation we've had in five months. We are close in some ways. We've developed alter egos for ourselves. He thinks of me as Hambone, a whiskey-drinking, cigarette-wielding femme fatale . I named him Cogburn, a down-on-his-luck hard drinker.