Changes in exercise capacity, quality of life and fatigue in cancer patients during an intervention

Abstract

The study explored the interdependence of changes in oxygen uptake, quality of life and cancer-related side-effect fatigue during a 4-month exercise intervention. Participants were during adjuvant (curative) or palliative therapy and post-adjuvant therapy (finished within the previous 12 months). Aerobic exercise capacity (VO2 peak), quality of life and fatigue symptom (EORTC QLQ-C30) were obtained in 101 cancer patients (30-77 years). After initial examination, patients participated in supervised and/or home-based training interventions. Patients were re-examined after 16-20 weeks and stratified into 3 subgroups (terciles) with respect to the absolute change in VO2 peak. The ANCOVA, with significant covariate effect for pretest fatigue score (F(5,101) = 8.150, P < 0.001), indicated significant differences between groups in outcome measures (P < 0.001). Based on the absolute change of VO2 peak (1.9 ± 1.7; 1.8 ± 0.8; 5.7 ± 2.8 ml/kg/min) there were significant differences in the quality of life improvement (17.2 ± 15.1 vs. 4.8 ± 22.0 points, P < 0.05) and cancer-related fatigue reduction (-6.1 ± 30.7; -11.5 ± 20.9; -21.2 ± 21.4 points) between upper and lower tercile. The findings point towards a relationship of exercise capacity enhancement, quality of life improvement and fatigue symptom reduction during and shortly after cancer treatment.

Physical fitness and physical activity in fatigued and non-fatigued inflammatory bowel disease patients

“…To our knowledge, this is the first study which shows a medium effect size for lower cardiorespiratory fitness (VO 2peak , VT, and 6MWD) in fatigued IBD patients compared with non-fatigued IBD patients. This finding is consistent with literature on cancer patients and liver transplant recipients, which demonstrated a relationship between impaired cardiorespiratory fitness and severity of fatigue [17,22]. The origin of the impaired cardiorespiratory fitness is possibly a less active behavior, as part of sickness behavior [53][54][55][56].…”

“…Impaired physical activity also induces impaired muscle performance [79,80]. Impaired muscle performance result in impaired physical fitness leading to further deteriorating fatigue [17,22,70,71]. Pathway 2: proinflammatory cytokines (particular TNF-a and IL-6) negatively affects on muscle performance [67,68,[101][102][103][104][105][106].…”

“…Pathway 2: proinflammatory cytokines (particular TNF-a and IL-6) negatively affects on muscle performance [67,68,[101][102][103][104][105][106]. Impaired muscle performance results in impaired physical fitness leading to further deteriorating fatigue [17,22,70,71]. these aforementioned interventions are effective in the majority of IBD patients, there are still patients suffering from severe fatigue.…”

“…However, literature suggests associations between impaired muscle strength, impaired physical activity and fatigue [15,19]. Moreover, most research on fatigue in cancer patients focused on exercise interventions and showed reduction of fatigue by these interventions [16,[20][21][22][23][24][25].…”

Efeitos do treinamento de força no músculo esquelético em ratos com caquexia induzida pelo câncer

“…Desse modo, com o passar dos anos, a literatura vem sendo capaz de evidenciar cada vez mais, os efeitos positivos do treinamento físico aeróbio e de força em diferentes variáveis, em pacientes durante e/ou após o tratamento de câncer. Ao passo que, são encontrados efeitos do exercício físico aeróbio em pacientes oncológicos na formação e manutenção da massa óssea (Irwin et al, 2009;Peppone et al, 2010), na melhora da insônia e fadiga (Coleman et al, 2012;Banzer et al, 2014), na melhora da resistência à insulina e inflamação (Lee et al, 2013), na diminuição de gordura corporal e aumento de massa livre de gordura (Irwin et al, 2009), no aumento do VO2pico (Banzer et al, 2014), entre outros.…”