Breast Cancer

Q: For the last two months, I have been taking a green coffee bean extract recommended by Dr. Oz on his show. So far, I've lost 10 pounds without even trying. What's your opinion of it? A: Generally, if something seems too good to be true, it probably is. But this stuff may actually work. Excitement about the weight-loss magic of green coffee bean extract began this year, after a "randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled, linear dose, crossover University of Scranton study.

SAN ANTONIO - Breast-cancer experts are cheering what could be some of the biggest advances in more than a decade: two new medicines that significantly delay the time until women with very advanced cases get worse. In a large international study, an experimental drug from Genentech called pertuzumab held cancer at bay for a median of 18 months when given with standard treatment, versus 12 months for others given only the usual treatment. It also strongly appears to be improving survival, and follow-up is continuing to see if it does.

THIS HAS been a bad year for proponents of early detection of breast cancer. Not only have we seen debates about the effectiveness of mammography, but a study just published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute found that breast self-examination did not prevent deaths from breast cancer. Once again women find themselves wondering what happened. For years, we've been told that early detection is the only way to ensure that you will find breast cancer at a curable stage.

Linda Kerns was 4 years old when she saw her mother die. One year later, her aunt died. When she was 34, she watched in agony as her sister died. All had breast cancer. None made it out of their 30s. Last year, at 35, she was diagnosed with the dreaded disease. With a malignant tumor the size of a baseball in one breast and the cancer already spread to nine nearby lymph nodes, she made a desperate choice: to subject her body to a near-lethal onetime dose of chemotherapy followed by a bone-marrow transplant to repair her chemically ravaged immune system.

Yesterday's Race for the Cure was the largest ever in Philadelphia, drawing at least 40,000 people to the Benjamin Franklin Parkway, and raising an estimated $2 million. With this success comes a sad irony: In a nation where 211,000 cases of breast cancer occur each year, Philadelphia's Race for the Cure has joined the heavyweight class of civic events, up with the St. Patrick's Day Parade and summer festivals on the Parkway. This cancer fund-raiser is now a popular Mother's Day tradition, particularly among those who, on that special Sunday in May, have no mother to telephone.

BABY-FEEDING WARNING Parents, don't give babies soy-based beverages other than infant formulas as their only source of nutrition. So warns the Food and Drug Administration, which says soy-based drinks, sometimes called "soy milk," do not have the nutrients infants need. The warning stems from the case of a 5-month-old baby girl, now in critical condition, fed almost since birth on a soy beverage bought in a health food store. FLU TOLL If you've suffered through it, you won't be surprised to learn that the 1989-90 flu season could turn out to be the worst in five years.

Cancer is a scary prospect, and we need all the help we can get to understand what it is, how it's treated, and how to cope with it. Some iPad tablet applications have risen to the task, or parts of it. A guide to 120 types of cancer is part of Cancer.net Mobile , from the American Society of Clinical Oncology. This free app has information about treatment, costs, and side effects, and helps patients and families manage life with cancer. Unfortunately, links to a video and podcast of "When the Doctor Says Cancer" were not working when we tested the app. Tools in the app let you log symptoms and side effects and note the questions that you need to take to the doctor's office, when you could be nervous and forget.

Camille Quattrone Ridarelli, 60, of Penn Valley, wife of former teen idol Bobby Rydell, her high school sweetheart, died Monday of cancer at Lankenau Hospital in Wynnewood. She and Roberto Ridarelli - Bobby Rydell was a stage name - grew up blocks from each other in South Philadelphia. In an interview several years ago, she said that when she was a student at St. Maria Goretti High School, "I used to see him on the trolley car when he went to [the old] Bishop Neumann, and wait for him, but he never gave me a second look.

One year ago, Shelley Dodt received a thrilling e-mail from her University of Pennsylvania breast surgeon: Dodt, now 56, of Palm City, Fla., had received Brian J. Czerniecki's experimental vaccine to treat her early-stage breast cancer, called DCIS, before having surgery to remove the cancer. The pathologist who examined the excised tissue under a microscope could not find any malignant cells. Revved by the vaccine, her immune system had wiped out the cancer. Few other patients have responded so completely to the vaccine, and no one can yet say whether the protective effect will decline over time.

The next time you click on TV and hear talk-show host Montel Williams looking deep into the eyes of a breast cancer patient and saying he sympathizes, check your cynicism. Williams had a double mastectomy 23 years ago when he was a Marine. He told attendees at a breast cancer research funding gala in New York last Saturday that doctors found a lump in his chest, operated and then discovered it was benign, according to the New York Post. Although he still has his nipples, "there was moderate scarring" that has faded.

Karen Keane Smith, 46, a Springfield, Delaware County, native and mother who chronicled online her six-year battle with breast cancer, died Tuesday, May 28, of the disease at her home in Atlanta. "As sad as this was, Karen had been fighting this recurrence of cancer since 2/13/12," posted husband Kirk Smith immediately after her death, "and the past two weeks had been nothing but surviving. "Karen is in a better place, and I'm happy she's now free from her pain and suffering.

NOW THAT Michael Douglas ' comeback from cancer is complete with his over-the-top role as Liberace in HBO's "Beyond the Candelabra," he's been doing a lot of press. Here's what he told the Guardian in Great Britain about his recent throat cancer. It was caused by oral sex. No, not from getting it. The Guardian asked Douglas if his cancer scare made him question his decades of smoking and drinking, and he replied, "No. Because without wanting to get too specific, this particular cancer is caused by HPV [human papillomavirus]

ESCONDIDO, Calif. - Less than two weeks after Angelina Jolie revealed she'd had a double mastectomy to avoid breast cancer, her aunt died from the disease Sunday. Debbie Martin died at age 61 at a hospital in Escondido, Calif., near San Diego, her husband, Ron Martin, told The Associated Press. Debbie Martin was the younger sister of Jolie's mother, Marcheline Bertrand, whose own death from ovarian cancer in 2007 inspired the surgery that Jolie described in a May 14 op-ed in the New York Times.

JUST HOURS before dawn on May 14, Jackie Underwood's three daughters held her in their arms as the cancer stole the last breath from her broken body. For many days before, and almost every day since, her children - Makia Underwood, 32, Zakia Clark, 29, and Tasha Clark, 27 - have worn hats and shirts that read "F--- CANCER," with the "C" in "F---" replaced by a breast-cancer-awareness ribbon. "That's how we feel. It took our mom away. It's a demon. It's the devil," Zakia Clark said.

Once almost unthinkable, cutting off healthy breasts to prevent cancer is increasingly common among women with certain gene mutations and, as Angelina Jolie found, often restores a sense of control. "I feel empowered that I made a strong choice that in no ways diminishes my femininity," the movie star wrote Tuesday in a New York Times op-ed. Jolie, who watched her mother die of ovarian cancer at age 56, inherited a mutation in a gene, BRCA1, that puts her at high risk of breast and ovarian cancer.

Angelina Jolie trended high among worldwide Twitter topics all day Tuesday. In a New York Times op-ed, she said she'd had a preventive double mastectomy after learning she carried a gene that carried with it an unusually high risk of breast cancer. The outpouring of support was unusual even for Twitter. Stars, especially, praised Jolie's resolve. Kristen Bell called her Times op-ed "admirable," and director Adam Shankman called it "beautiful. " Nia Vardalos called for "a moment of quiet respect for Angelina Jolie's candor and all women's bravery in facing this choice.

Denise Benn spent Mother's Day last year enduring the effects of chemotherapy, trying to treat the cancer that invaded her colon and worried her five sons. One of those sons is Arrelious Benn, now an Eagles wide receiver and in better spirits than a year ago. One of the reasons is the health of Denise, whose cancer is in remission. On Saturday, one day before Mother's Day, Denise joined her five sons on Team Arrelious, created for the Susan G. Komen Global Race for the Cure, a 5K walk/run in his native Washington.

The Temple football team has been participating in the annual Komen Philadelphia Race for the Cure since 2006. The Owls, however, will have added roles in Sunday's fund-raiser for breast cancer research at the Eakins Oval/Philadelphia Museum of Art. Fifteen members of Temple's football family - including head coach Matt Rhule and his wife, Julie - will participate in the 5K race, 5K walk, or 1-mile walk. More than 50 others associated with the Big East program have volunteered to hand out water.

For some, Mother's Day involved brunch. For others, a few blissful hours to putter in the garden or to read a book. In Philadelphia, thousands marked the day to honor Mom by walking or running to help protect all women. The Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure, the region's largest one-day breast cancer fund-raiser, brought together grandmothers, mothers, mothers-to-be and little girls far too young to be thinking about motherhood. Men participated too, an important reminder that they are not immune to breast cancer.

IN THE BATTLE against ovarian cancer, three puppies at the University of Pennsylvania will be on the front lines. The pups - Ohlin and Thunder, both Labradors, and McBain, a springer spaniel - have been conscripted to lead the charge in a novel collaboration announced last week between Penn and the Monell Chemical Senses Center. Ovarian cancer claims the lives of more than 14,000 women every year and is the fifth leading cause of cancer-related deaths in women in the nation. The new collaboration takes aim at the silent killer with a combination of chemistry, nanotechnology - and dogs.