Early detection and improved treatments for cancer have resulted in roughly 12 million survivors alive in the United States today. This growing population faces unique challenges from their disease and treatments, including risk for recurrent cancer, other chronic diseases, and persistent adverse effects on physical functioning and quality of life. Historically, clinicians advised cancer patients to rest and to avoid activity; however, emerging research on exercise has challenged this recommendation. To this end, a roundtable was convened by American College of Sports Medicine to distill the literature on the safety and efficacy of exercise training during and after adjuvant cancer therapy and to provide guidelines. The roundtable concluded that exercise training is safe during and after cancer treatments and results in improvements in physical functioning, quality of life, and cancer-related fatigue in several cancer survivor groups. Implications for disease outcomes and survival are still unknown. Nevertheless, the benefits to physical functioning and quality of life are sufficient for the recommendation that cancer survivors follow the 2008 Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans, with specific exercise programming adaptations based on disease and treatment-related adverse effects. The advice to "avoid inactivity," even in cancer patients with existing disease or undergoing difficult treatments, is likely helpful.

Doxorubicin (Dox) is a highly effective antineoplastic antibiotic associated with a dose-limiting cardiotoxicity that may result in irreversible cardiomyopathy and heart failure. The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of low-intensity exercise training (LIET) during the course of Dox treatment on cardiac function, myosin heavy chain expression, oxidative stress, and apoptosis activation following treatment. Male Sprague-Dawley rats either remained sedentary or were exercise trained on a motorized treadmill at 15 m/min, 20 min/day, 5 days/wk (Monday through Friday) for 2 wk. During the same 2-wk period, Dox (2.5 mg/kg) or saline was administered intraperitoneally to sedentary and exercised rats 3 days/wk (Monday, Wednesday, Friday) 1-2 h following the exercise training sessions (cumulative Dox dose: 15 mg/kg). Five days following the final injections, hearts were isolated for determination of left ventricular (LV) function, lipid peroxidation, antioxidant enzyme protein expression, 72-kDa heat shock protein expression, caspase-3 activity, and myosin heavy chain isoform expression. Dox treatment significantly impaired LV function and increased caspase-3 activity in sedentary animals (P < 0.05). LIET attenuated the LV dysfunction and apoptotic signal activation induced by Dox treatment and increased glutathione peroxidase expression, but it had no significant effect on lipid peroxidation, protein expression of myosin heavy chain isoforms, 72-kDa heat shock protein, or superoxide dismutase isoforms. In conclusion, our data suggest that LIET applied during chronic Dox treatment protects against cardiac dysfunction following treatment, possibly by enhancing antioxidant defenses and inhibiting apoptosis.

The technology of building an expert system for diagnosing malignant nature of invasive tumors of the mammary gland based on a set of quantitative features of the cell nuclei has been developed. Its peculiarity was the presence of weighting coefficients in all the features. Quantitative features were obtained by transforming the initial morphometric data with the help of simple (evaluation of mean values and building of histograms) and complex (regression analysis) mathematical operations. The expert system consisted of one‐dimensional X‐matrix used for investigations and two‐dimensional standard S‐matrix. The X‐matrix elements were assigned for filling with the quantitative features of the studied sample with a nonestablished diagnosis. The S‐matrix elements contained threshold values of quantitative features from the system of diagnostic decision criteria for malignant forms of diseases and their weighting coefficients. Threshold values of nuclear features (larger or smaller) were determined taking into account the range of their values in the groups of malignant and benign pathology. Significance of quantitative features in diagnosing diseases has been assessed. The presence of weighting coefficients allowed diagnosing malignant and benign pathology in a quantitative form by the diagnostic index value. Diagnostic index was calculated by the sum of weighting coefficients of features of the studied sample, which fell within the range of system of the S‐matrix diagnostic decision criteria. Clinical trials revealed high efficiency of the developed approach while diagnosis of breast cancer invasive forms at a preoperative stage. Diagn. Cytopathol. 2013. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Endurance training prior to DOX treatment protects against acute DOX cardiotoxicity for up to 10 d, and this protection can potentially be explained by a preservation of MHC isoform distribution.