A new study published in the American Journal of Physiology suggests that exercise may increase the effect of chemotherapy on cancer..

In a study, scientists from the University of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia, USA) found that in mice with melanoma, chemotherapy gives better results if the animals are forced to run..

Lead author Joseph Libonati, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing, and his colleagues initially tried to protect mice with cancer from the damaging effects of chemotherapy on the heart, which is often seen with doxorubicin treatment..

This drug is effective against many types of cancer, but one of its most dangerous side effects is damage to heart cells, which can lead to heart failure..

Prof Libonati says cancer patients usually take their illness very seriously and are " But when we deal with cancer, we have to deal with long-term cardiovascular problems..

There is evidence that regular exercise before chemotherapy can protect heart cells from the damaging effects of doxorubicin.. But there is not enough data on how exercise during chemotherapy affects.

For their study, the team included four groups of lab mice with induced melanoma.. In the first 2 weeks of the experiment, two groups of animals received doxorubicin, and the rest received placebo.. One doxorubicin group and one placebo group were given exercise at the same time.. Mice were made to run for 45 minutes a day, 5 days a week..

Exercise helped fight cancer, but didn't protect the heart.

After 2 weeks of therapy, the team found that the mice that received doxorubicin showed signs of heart damage.. The original goal of the study was not achieved - exercise did not have a protective effect on the heart muscle.. Cardiomyocyte death and fibrosis were observed in the hearts of rodents, and cardiac function decreased..

But scientists found something they didn't expect to see. In mice that received doxorubicin and ran 5 days a week, tumors became significantly smaller than in the control group.. It was clear that exercise increased the antitumor effect of chemotherapy, although it did not protect the heart..

Scientists say the mechanism of this effect is unclear.. Perhaps this is due to increased blood circulation, due to which more of the drug reaches the tumor.. But only special studies will help to clarify this mechanism..

Professor Libonati says: “If exercise works that way, then you can get a lower dose of chemotherapy, which means fewer side effects of treatment.. This is just the beginning of the study. People don't sit all day after taking a pill. They move throughout the day, and this in a certain way affects the metabolism of the drug. ”.

You can even think about creating drugs that will mimic the effect of exercise, because not all cancer patients can run for 45 minutes a day.. But for this, it is necessary to study in detail the mechanism of this connection..

Funding for the study was provided by the US National Center for Translational Sciences and the Center for Biobehavioral Research at the University of Pennsylvania..

Recently, there have been many interesting studies in oncology.. For example, recently in Science Translational Medicine, scientists reported that an injection of one type of bacteria can cause a cancerous tumor to “shrink”.. Researchers injected a modified strain of Clostridium novyi into rats, dogs, and even one person with cancer, seeing an upregulation of the anti-cancer response..

medbe. en.