Written By: Shraddha Rupavate | Published : September 20, 2014 1:43 PM IST
Exercise has far-reaching effects and is even recommended to cancer patients to some extent for psychological benefits.
A recent paper published in the American Journal of Physiology Exercise suggested that exercise could have an added advantage for cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy. The study, carried out by Libonati and colleagues, tested the effect of exercise on those with cardiac-related side-effects of the common cancer drug Doxorubicin.
For the study they injected a group of mice with melanoma cells and treated them with the cancer drug Doxorubicin. Another group of mice received placebo injections. For the subsequent two weeks, a few mice from the group that received treatment and the group that were receiving placebo were put on exercise regimen while the rest of the mice remained sedentary.
The results showed that mice that both received chemotherapy and exercised had significantly smaller tumours after two weeks compared to mice that only received the cancer drug. This suggested that combining exercise with chemotherapy could have beneficial effect on chemotherapy patients.
According to Joseph Libonati, an associate professor with University of Pennsylvania, although cancer is the immediate concern for patients receiving the drug but later they have to deal with long-term elevated risk of cardio-vascular disease. If exercise helps in this way, you could potentially use a smaller dose of the drug and get fewer side effects.
Image source: Getty images
With inputs from IANS
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