DRUG SLOWS RARE CANCER\Patient's life prolonged, pain eased in UCLA study.

Byline: Sara Catania Daily News Staff Writer

The thing Vince Colavitti remembers most is the pain.

For months, doctors puzzled over the relentless burning that seized his back and slowly spread to his ribs, legs and collarbone, leaving him unable to work, exercise, drive a car or do much of anything at all.

Finally, a series of X-rays revealed the cause: A war was raging inside the West Hills engineer.

His body erroneously was producing a flood of white blood cells in a frantic search for a disease that did not exist. Without a clear enemy in sight, the cells set upon Colavitti's spine, slowly gnawing it away.

The condition, doctors told him, is known as multiple myeloma, a rare and often fatal form of cancer that attacks the bones, causing them to melt into mush or weaken and snap.

About 50,000 Americans are afflicted with multiple myeloma, and one in five die. The doctors gave Colavitti a battery of pain killers and two years to live.

A doctor at the University of California, Los Angeles, who heard of Colavitti's case, invited him to join several studies for new treatments of the cancer.

Today, more than two years after learning of his cancer, Colavitti is alive and fairly well, thanks, in part, to a drug tested at UCLA.

A study released last week by a research team from the university and the Veterans Administration Medical Center, West Los Angeles shows what Colavitti already knew. That the drug - known as Aredia, or pamidronate - lessens both pain and bone destruction caused by multiple myeloma.

Aredia is different from chemotherapy and radiation in that it attacks the "soil" or area around the cancer, rather than the tumor itself, said Dr. James Berenson, who co-authored the study, which appeared in The New England Journal of Medicine.

Aredia has few side effects, unlike other forms of treatment, which can lead to hair loss, seizures and other discomforts.

Eventually, many more cancer patients may benefit from Aredia. Berenson said he is exploring new ways the drug could be used, perhaps in treating breast, lung and prostate cancer, which also affect the bones.

One of the drug's greatest assets, Berenson said, is that it can be used in conjunction with chemotherapy and radiation treatment.

"At this point, I don't think on its own that Aredia would be enough to treat a myeloma patient," Berenson said. "But perhaps somewhere down the road, that might be the case.

Colavitti, 63, is still plagued with back pain - by the time he was treated for myeloma the cancer had eaten away at his spine, causing it to compress and leaving him 2 inches shorter.

But since he began the once-a-month, intravenous Aredia treatments about 15 months ago, the raw, sandpaper feeling that stretched across his ribs and upper legs has disappeared.

"The pain was there all the time, and then all of a sudden, one day it wasn't there," said Colavitti, whose thin, bookish appearance is intensified by oversize glasses. "I can only attribute it to the Aredia."

On a recent morning, Colavitti sank into an overstuffed armchair in his living room and explained the difference a drug like Aredia can make.

Colavitti came to Southern California from New York decades ago to work in aerospace. Over time, as the Cold War ended and jobs disappeared, he became increasingly dissatisfied with his work.

"It was less defense work to defend the nation and more about making money," he said. "It wasn't satisfying anymore.

Considering a career shift, Colavitti went to night school, earning a degree in psychotherapy. At the time, Colavitti decided to stick with aerospace, and the night school degree seemed just a momentary departure.

But recently, the degree has served him well, helping him cope with his own suffering and allowing him to offer pro bono counseling to cancer and AIDS patients.

"You can dwell on trivial stuff for almost all of your life without realizing it," he said. "The cancer has made me a much more empathetic person. It's really been a tremendously exhilarating feeling."

Such work would have been much more difficult, if not impossible, if Colavitti were still in the throes of pain at its worst.

"You learn to live with the pain," he said. "But you are grateful for any relief."

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(color) Vince Colavitti says his disease increased his empathy and allowed him to counsel others. Myung J. Chun/Daily News