Specific Exercise Improves Quality of Life of Patients with Incurable Breast Cancer
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With around 2.3 million new cases in 2020, breast cancer is the most commonly diagnosed type of cancer worldwide; in the same year, almost 700,000 people died from the disease. For patients whose cancer has already metastasized, medicine has made good progress in terms of survival time. In the past decade, however, there has been no evidence of a substantial improvement in health-related quality of life. Whether physical exercise also has a positive effect on advanced cancer had so far not been sufficiently investigated. This was the starting point for the international study co-initiated by Professor Zimmer and funded by the EU, in which researchers from Cologne, Heidelberg, the Netherlands, Sweden, Poland, Spain and Australia were also involved.
Significantly lower level of fatigue
A total of 357 people with advanced breast cancer took part in a 9-month exercise program. Half of them completed one hour of supervised and individualized activity twice a week, which consisted of resistance, aerobic and balance exercises. In addition, the participants were encouraged to be physically active for at least 30 minutes per day on the remaining five days of the week, which was monitored via an exercise app and an activity tracker. The second half formed the control group. These participants were also given activity trackers as well as access to the exercise app and were asked to complete 150 minutes of aerobic exercises per week as well as resistance exercises two to three times a week, but they did not take part in any special sessions.
In the group that had attended the supervised exercise sessions, the researchers were able to observe a substantially better health-related quality of life than in the control group and a significantly lower level of fatigue. Exercise also had a positive effect on physical fitness, pain and shortness of breath, among other things. “It’s fantastic to see how you can help people in the final stage of their lives in a comparatively simple way,” says Professor Philipp Zimmer. “Our results might make it easier to integrate more detailed physical activity recommendations in the current international guidelines for advanced breast cancer.”
Another paper by Professor Zimmer and his team, published recently in the prestigious journal Signal Transduction and Targeted Therapy, also looks at the question of why physical exercise can act like a drug in certain parts of the body. Although there is ample evidence for the positive effects of physical activity on the prevention and treatment of various diseases, the understanding of the underlying biological mechanisms is only rudimentary. Physical exercise releases numerous signaling molecules – called exerkines – from various tissues, such as skeletal muscle, cardiac muscle, adipose and liver tissue. The paper sheds light on the preventive and therapeutic value of exerkine-induced signal transduction in various diseases, with a focus on the interaction of organ systems.
In this context, another recent article by the researchers in the journal Nature Reviews Immunology discusses to what extent exercise stimulates the body’s own anticancer immunity. Specifically, it looks at the question of why exercise counteracts the development and progression of certain cancers and not of others. “Viewed from a mechanistic perspective, physical exercise acts similarly to modern immunotherapies in certain points of the body,” says Professor Philipp Zimmer. “It is not a universal remedy, but in the context of cancer, it can complement medical therapy by enhancing its effect or reducing side effects.”
Original publications:
Nature Medicine: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41591-024-03143-y
Signal Transduction and Targeted Therapy: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41392-024-01841-0
Nature Reviews Immunology: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41577-024-01001-z
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