A recent study of nine patients with advanced-stage prostate cancer performed 34 minutes of high-intensity exercise on a stationary bike, with serum collection immediately before and after, and again. 30 minutes after exercise.
The team found that the serum obtained immediately after this ‘dose’ of exercise contained elevated levels of anti-cancer myokines, causing an in vitro suppression of prostate cancer cell growth of around 17 per cent. The serum myokine levels and cancer suppression returned to baseline within 30 minutes.
Now, in two new studies from the University of Turku in Finland, short bouts of light to moderate exercise can increase the amount of immune cells that destroy cancer.
Besides, exercise lowers cancer risk and reduces the side effects of cancer treatments. It also improves the quality of life of patients and their prognosis.
“Previously, it was thought that cancer patients should simply rest after a cancer diagnosis. Today, we have more researched information that exercise can even improve cancer prognosis. However, it is not yet fully known how exercise controls cancerexplains research assistant Tiia Koivula .
preclinical studies Previous studies have found that exercise affects how the immune system works, so more immune cells are transferred to the tumor site and become more active in killing cancer cells.
These two new studies, carried out at the Turku PET Center of the University of Turku in Finland and published in ‘Scientific Reports’, aimed to find out if a short bout of exercise affects the mobilization of immune cells in cancer patients.
Both studies involved 28 patients with lymphoma and breast cancer recently diagnosed. Lymphoma patients were between 20 and 69 years old and breast cancer patients between 37 and 73 years old.
During the study, heThe patients performed a 10-minute exercise on a bicycle. Blood samples were taken once before exercise and twice after exercise.
«The pedaling resistance sIt was determined individually for each patient to correspond to light or moderate physical activity. The most important goal was for the patients to be able to cycle for 10 minutes without exhausting themselves, but for their heart rate to increase,” explains Koivula.
different immune cells
The researchers looked at the numbers of several different immune cells, also known as white blood cells, in the blood samples and compared the numbers in the samples before and after exercise. During the exercise, cytotoxic T cells and natural killer cells increased in the bloodstream of lymphoma patients.
In breast cancer patients, exercise also increased the total number of white blood cells, as well as the number of intermediate monocytes and B cells, plus cytotoxic T cells and natural killer cells. The change was rapid and transient, and in most patients the number of immune cells returned to a level corresponding to the resting value in blood samples taken 30 minutes after the end of exercise.
“It is especially interesting that we saw an increase in cytotoxic immune cells during exercise in both groups of patients. These immune cells are capable of destroying cancer cells,” says Koivula.
“Although our results indicate that the higher the intensity of exercise, the more immune cells are transferred from their storage organs into the bloodstream, it is notable that also light or moderate intensity exercise lasting only 10 minutes will cause an increase in the number of immune cells that are important in fighting cancer,” says Koivula.
However, the researcher insists that it is important for patients to find physical exercise that they enjoy since cancer treatments can tire them out and decrease their motivation to exercise, so “it is reassuring to know that just ten minutes of cycling or walking to the supermarket, for example, may be enough to stimulate the body’s immune system.”
“More research is needed in cancer patients to study whether immune cells are transported to the tumor after exercise, where they could kill cancer cells. This has been shown to happen in preclinical studies, but the research in cancer patients is still quite incomplete,” says Koivula.
Cancer treatments often affect immune defenses by reducing the number of immune cells. When the immune system is weakened, the stimulating role of exercise can be especially important.
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