Breast Cancer Patients

The period of time when women with early-stage breast cancer remain free of disease may be enhanced by additional therapy after primary treatment, according to three new studies, the National Cancer Institute announced Thursday. In a highly unusual move, the institute released the findings before publishing them in a medical journal or presenting them to other researchers at a scientific meeting, which is the traditional and accepted procedure. "This is an important public health matter," Dr.

Most court cases involving patent law are corporate battles, with one company suing another for infringing on its intellectual property rights and, therefore, profits. Big companies fighting over big money can seem painfully irrelevant, especially when so many of us are simply struggling to get by. But the case coming before the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday challenging two patents is a different animal, with enormous implications for both our health and shared humanity. The patents in question are on two human genes, BRCA1 and BRCA2, commonly referred to as the "breast cancer genes.

By seventh grade we had been hearing that our bodies were going through a lot of fascinating changes. Hardly anyone I knew could tell, and everyone was thinking there was something wrong with them and this pretty much set the tone of the next six years. --cartoonist Lynda Barry Teen-age girls and their body-image traumas are standard fodder for lighthearted commentary.

Trials and tribulations in myriad forms are at the center of all five Oscar-nominated documentary short films this year. There are two very different but incisive cuts at the country's homeless problem in "Inocente" and "Redemption," a beautiful breast cancer story in "Mondays at Racine," "Open Heart's" moving look at Rwandan children with heart disease, and finally, "King's Point's" candid examination of the social and physical strains in a Florida retirement...

The FDA last month rescinded approval for Avastin to treat advanced breast cancer because although preliminary studies show it led to longer periods of disease-free survival it did not increase overall survival. But a study presented Wednesday suggests their may be a role for Avastin after all. The phase-3 study was conducted among 424 women a type of breast called HER-2 positive disease. A new analysis of the data, presented at the San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium found that adding Avastin to a regimen of Herceptin and docetaxel resulted in a 28% reduced rate of disease progression or death.

Breast cancer patients who take drugs called aromatase inhibitors can experience a decline in bone density. However, a new study shows that adding an osteoporosis drug to their medication regimen prevents the bone loss. Aromatase inhibitors halt estrogen production in postmenopausal women, which is good for stopping the growth of cancer cells. But the loss of estrogen harms bone health and these patients are at higher risk for bone loss and fractures. In the new study, from the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute, women taking aromatase inhibitors were either prescribed the osteoporosis drug zoledronic acid (also known as Zometa)

There may be few pregnancy nightmares worse than finding a lump in one's breast, given the dueling fears that if it's cancer, treatment could harm the developing fetus, while delay and pregnancy hormones could fuel a tumor's growth. But a new study finds that pregnant women treated for breast cancer are more likely to survive their ordeal than breast cancer patients of the same age who were not pregnant when their cancer was diagnosed. Five years after their diagnosis, almost 74% of the women diagnosed with breast cancer during pregnancy were still alive.

Women 65 and older with breast cancer should consider chemotherapy even though doctors have been reluctant to use it in that age group because of the side effects, researchers say. Doctors at the Vermont Cancer Center in Burlington analyzed cases between 1975 and 1999 and found that otherwise "healthy older patients are likely to derive similar treatment benefits as younger patients" from chemotherapy.

When Marie Desilets discovered a year or so ago that she needed radiation for breast cancer, she faced a dilemma. The 82-year-old, who lives about an hour's drive from Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, could get regular radiation treatments, which would require her to be in Boston five days a week for seven weeks. Or she could opt for a new type of radiation that requires only 10 treatments -- given twice a day for five days.

A well-known drug called pamidronate can markedly reduce severe pain from bone metastases in breast cancer patients, according to researchers from the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. The drug, whose trade name is Aredia, slows the destruction of bone that is a common and painful complication of some forms of cancer. Dr. Gabriel N. Hortobagyi and his colleagues at the center studied 382 breast cancer patients, giving half the drug and half a placebo.

Elwood Jensen, a medical researcher whose ground-breaking work in the field of endocrinology and breast cancer led to revolutionary and life-saving treatments, died of complications from pneumonia on Dec. 16 in suburban Cincinnati, the University of Cincinnati announced. He was 92. He was repeatedly nominated for the Nobel Prize for his discovery of hormone receptors while at the University of Chicago in the 1950s and 1960s. At Chicago, Jensen focused on the impact that breast tissue had on estrogen while most other researchers analyzed how the hormone influenced tissue.

When cancer blooms in the body, tiny bits of tumor DNA can be found in the blood . Cancer specialists would love it if these DNA fragments could one day be used in noninvasive diagnostic tests -- “liquid biopsies ” --  that are relatively inexpensive and sensitive. There's a lot of work going on in this area right now. One team of researchers reported a step toward that goal in a paper published Wednesday in the journal Science Translational Medicine.

Exercise has been touted as a good way to help prevent certain diseases and conditions, but can it be useful after the fact? Yes, says a study, which suggests that a fitness regimen can enhance the health of patients following treatment. The paper analyzed 34 studies that looked at the effect of exercise on patients who had breast cancer, as well as other types of cancer, such as prostate and lung. The various studies included aerobic, resistance and strength workouts, the average length was 13 weeks and the average number of people in each trial was 93. Most of the control groups consisted of people who were sedentary or told to do no exercise.

Chemotherapy can destroy ovarian function in premenopausal women and much research has been dedicated to finding ways to preserve fertility in these women. Among breast cancer patients, for instance, about one in 200 are younger than age 40, and some of them may wish to become pregnant after successful cancer treatment. At least one of the strategies to preserve fertility in these women looks to be a failure, however. Researchers led by Dr. Pamela Munster at UC San Francisco conducted a study of premenopausal women undergoing chemotherapy.

The FDA last month rescinded approval for Avastin to treat advanced breast cancer because although preliminary studies show it led to longer periods of disease-free survival it did not increase overall survival. But a study presented Wednesday suggests their may be a role for Avastin after all. The phase-3 study was conducted among 424 women a type of breast called HER-2 positive disease. A new analysis of the data, presented at the San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium found that adding Avastin to a regimen of Herceptin and docetaxel resulted in a 28% reduced rate of disease progression or death.

The cancer drug Avastin should not be used to treat breast cancer that has spread to other organs because it doesn't help patients enough to justify its risky side effects, the Food and Drug Administration ruled Friday. The decision comes five months after an FDA advisory committee recommended that the federal agency withdraw its approval of Avastin for breast cancer patients. Clinical trial results have fueled doubts for years about its value for treating breast cancer. Still, FDA Commissioner Margaret A. Hamburg said the choice was difficult because so many women and their doctors have put their faith in the drug and lobbied hard on its behalf.

"I can't concentrate." "My mind is foggy." "I can't remember things." These are common complaints expressed by cancer survivors in support groups, online message boards and doctors' offices across the country. Long known to cancer patients who have undergone chemotherapy as "chemo brain" or "chemo fog," it is a condition of cognitive impairment that has only recently been confirmed by a handful of studies.

She seemed invincible. Thirty-eight-year-old Cindy Gensler had buckets of wavy red hair and less body fat than a bagel. She could bench press 200 pounds and dead-lift four and a quarter, and had just taken second place at the National Power-lifting Championships. The "fat little kid" was on her way to becoming a fitness folk hero. She was waiting for the people at "American Gladiators" to call and tell her that yes, she was going to be on the show.

Here's new evidence that the condition known as “chemo brain” is real: A study of breast cancer patients finds that women who had chemotherapy along with surgery to treat their disease had more trouble kicking their brains into high gear than women who were treated with surgery alone. They also performed much worse on tests of mental function than a group of healthy women who served as controls. The study , published Monday in Archives of Neurology, included 25 breast cancer survivors who had surgery and chemotherapy, 19 breast cancer survivors who had surgery but no chemotherapy, and 18 women with no history of breast cancer who were picked because their ages, level of education and menopausal status were similar to those of the women who had chemo.

Breast cancer patients who take drugs called aromatase inhibitors can experience a decline in bone density. However, a new study shows that adding an osteoporosis drug to their medication regimen prevents the bone loss. Aromatase inhibitors halt estrogen production in postmenopausal women, which is good for stopping the growth of cancer cells. But the loss of estrogen harms bone health and these patients are at higher risk for bone loss and fractures. In the new study, from the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute, women taking aromatase inhibitors were either prescribed the osteoporosis drug zoledronic acid (also known as Zometa)