Exercise boosts breast cancer physical, psychological wellbeing!
Group exercise sessions can improve both the physical
and psychological wellbeing of early breast cancer patients,
researchers reveal.
They call for clinicians to encourage their patients to
exercise and policy makers to consider including exercise
in cancer rehabilitation services.
Treatment for breast cancer, such as chemotherapy and
radiotherapy, can badly affect quality of life. However,
current cancer rehabilitation programs are based mainly on
psychotherapy or social support, with little focus on
physical problems, the researchers point out.
Reporting in an advance online publication of the British
Medical Journal, Nanette Mutrie (Strathclyde University,
Glasgow, UK) and co-workers examined the effect of an exercise
program on women receiving treatment for early breast cancer.
The exercise program consisted of group exercise sessions led by
trained exercise specialists twice weekly for 12 weeks, and an
additional exercise session each week at home.
Overall, 203 women were randomly assigned to the supervised exercise
program alongside usual care, or usual care alone. The participants
were followed-up after 12 weeks and again after 6 months.
The researchers calculated intervention effect estimates after
adjusting for baseline values, study site, treatment at baseline, and age.
This revealed intervention effect estimates at 12 weeks of 129 for
meters walked in 12 minutes, 182 for minutes of moderate intensity
activity reported in a week, 2.3 for scores on a shoulder mobility
test, 2.6 for scores on a shoulder mobility test, and 4.0 for
scores on a positive affect scale.
Most of these effects were maintained at 6 months, and an
intervention effect on breast cancer specific quality of life
emerged, the team reports.
Mutrie et al conclude: "Supervised group exercise provided
functional and psychological benefit after a 12-week
intervention and 6 months later."
Br Med J 2007; Advance online publication
