Cancer Treatment

Connecticut men's basketball coach Jim Calhoun is being treated for a second bout of skin cancer, but he expects to be on the bench this fall for his 22nd season with the Huskies. "I want to coach basketball at UConn," the Hall of Famer, 66, said yesterday. "At this moment I love what I'm doing." His physician, Jeffrey Spiro, attended the news conference with Calhoun and said he believes the coach is now cancer free and has a good prognosis. Calhoun is to undergo six weeks of radiation treatments to minimize any chance of the cancer returning.

The children of a 62-year-old Indiana woman are trying to pressure a Maryland biotech company into treating their mother's pancreatic cancer with an experimental drug not yet approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. The three daughters of Connie Loughman held a news conference at their parents' Indianapolis home yesterday, pleading for access to the drug. They have launched a video on YouTube devoted to their mother's plight and set up a Web site asking people to e-mail executives at Gaithersburg's GenVec Inc., which is testing the promising cancer treatment.

Hoping to strengthen their stressed-out immune systems, many people with cancer join support groups, attend yoga classes or take other steps to lift their moods. Do these mind-body interventions help prolong life? A recent study of 1,093 patients with advanced head and neck cancer suggests they do not. The report, published in October in the journal Cancer, found no difference in life expectancy of patients with a strong sense of emotional well-being compared with those with high levels of emotional distress.

The standard treatment for prostate cancer - shutting off the body's production of androgen hormones - can chop 2 1/2 years off the lives of men who are at high risk of developing heart disease, Boston researchers reported yesterday. The drugs used for suppressing the hormones produce anemia, weight gain and insulin resistance, a group of factors known as metabolic syndrome. These effects can sharply increase the risk of a fatal heart attack, especially in men who are at high risk, Dr. Anthony D'Amico of Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology.

ATLANTA -- For women with a certain type of breast cancer, the drug Herceptin has represented a major advance, extending lives and preventing tumor recurrence. But for some of those women, the drug never works, and it eventually stops working for others. Now, an experimental drug seems to help women whose cancer continues to worsen despite taking Herceptin, doctors said yesterday. Some doctors said that the new drug, lapatinib, which the maker GlaxoSmithKline said it would sell under the name Tykerb, would initially be used only as a backup for Herceptin.

For the Kids, a Crofton-based charity that has applied for nonprofit status, will hold a golf tournament to help pay medical and other expenses for Mount Airy resident Erik Lerch, 12, who received a bone marrow transplant in April. Doctors say Erik, who recently spent about three months in the hospital, has several types of cancer, including leukemia. The tournament is sold out, but sponsors and donations of money, products and services are still needed. The organizers are also collecting baby supplies, which will be donated to a local charity.

WASHINGTON - Amid intense speculation that he will step down in June, ailing Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist returned to the bench yesterday for the first time since he began treatments for thyroid cancer and appeared determined to pick up where he left off five months ago. Without fanfare or comment, Rehnquist took his center seat when public arguments opened at 10 a.m., then presided over the court for the next two hours, interjecting questions and,...

Linda Perez said it was a little more than a year ago when her life came to a screeching halt on the cool steel table of a doctor's office at Anne Arundel Medical Center. "The doctor looked and me and told me there was cancer in my breast," said Perez. "A lot of cancer." A nurse, wife and mother of three, Perez said she recalls walking out of the office and sinking into a chair in the hospital lobby. That's when - if only for a moment - a flash of hope came to her. "This woman just walked up to me and put her hand on my shoulder," said Perez, 44. "She looked at me and said, `You are exactly where I was one year ago.' " The woman, Denise O'Neill - also a mother of three - had recently undergone radiation and surgery for the breast cancer she was diagnosed with in April 2003.

A new genetic test accurately predicts which women will have a greater chance of breast cancer recurrence, according to studies that hold out hope of increasing survival rates among high-risk patients while helping others avoid agonizing chemotherapy. "The results are quite striking," said one of the researchers, JoAnne Zujewski, director of breast cancer therapeutics in the Clinical Investigations Branch of the National Cancer Institute. The technique was the subject of three new studies, which were released yesterday and Thursday at the San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium.

Relatives of a man killed in a drunken-driving crash asked an Anne Arundel County Circuit Court judge yesterday for compassion for the driver, the victim's friend, who is seriously ill with cancer. The request was made as Richard Vernon Green, 42, of Columbia Beach, who was charged with manslaughter, entered an Alford plea in the death of Joseph Edward Klotz, 41, of Wayson's Corner, a spokeswoman for the prosecutor's office said. Green did not admit guilt in the June 2, 2002, crash but acknowledged that there was enough evidence to convict him. Judge Paul A. Hackner scheduled sentencing for July 12, with the understanding that Green might not live until then or might be too ill to be imprisoned.