(Press-News.org) They say a phone call can change your life and for colorectal or bowel cancer survivors this is true, a new study by a QUT researcher has found.
Associate Professor Anna Hawkes, from QUT's Institute of Health and Biomedical Innovation, evaluated the effects of a telephone delivered program called CanChange aimed at improving health outcomes for people diagnosed with bowel cancer.
The study was conducted at the Cancer Council Queensland and funded by the Australian Government, Cancer Australia.
The CanChange program targeted health behaviours such as levels of physical activity, weight management and diet as these are known to have a significant effect on physical functioning, quality of life and fatigue after a bowel cancer diagnosis. Importantly they may also affect the chance of cancer recurrence, and survival.
She said the study, published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, found at the end of a 12 month trial that bowel cancer survivors who had received regular telephone support were more physically active, maintained their body weight and had a healthier diet.
The study compared the health behaviours of two groups of bowel cancer survivors, one of which participated in the CanChange program.
"After 12 months we found a significant and positive difference in the physical activity of people who participated in the CanChange program," she said.
"CanChange participants also maintained their body mass index (BMI) whereas those who didn't take part in the trial significantly increased their BMI. Participants also reduced their fat intake and increased their vegetable intake."
Associate Professor Hawkes said bowel cancer was a leading cause of illness and death in Australia and the western world.
"The five year survival rate has increased to 65 per cent, but survivors still face many physical and mental challenges that can have a significant effect on their quality of life," she said.
"But despite the challenges associated with a cancer diagnosis and treatment, survivors can be motivated to make behavioural improvements like those targeted in the CanChange program that can have a very positive effect on their lives."
Associate Professor Hawkes, who was also a finalist in the 2013 Women in Technology awards sponsored by IHBI for her work with telephone delivered programs, said this study was the first of its kind to use the telephone to target a range of health behaviours to improve health outcomes specifically for bowel cancer survivors.
She said the success of this program made way for the program to be rolled out across Australia as well as internationally.
"Telephone-delivered programs are acceptable to cancer survivors as they are convenient, flexible and can be delivered across the country. They are also relatively low cost," she said.
"The CanChange program would be immediately translatable through existing telephone helplines which are widely used for patients with cancer in Australia and other countries."
###
The paper is titled Effects of a Telephone-Delivered Multiple Health Behaviour Chance intervention (CanChange) on Health and Behavioral Outcomes in Survivors of Colorectal Cancer: a Randomized Controlled Trial.
Media contacts:
Sandra Hutchinson
QUT media officer (Tue/Wed)
3138 9449 or media@qut.edu.au
Rose Trapnell
QUT media team leader
3138 2361.
A phone call can change your life: Study finds
2013-09-11
ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:
Global warming could change strength of El Niño
2013-09-11
Wednesday, September11: Global warming could impact the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO), altering the cycles of El Niño and La Niña events that bring extreme drought and flooding to Australia and many other Pacific-rim countries.
New research published in Nature Geoscience using coral samples from Kiribati has revealed how the ENSO cycle has changed over the past 4300 years. This research suggests that external changes have an impact on the strength and timing of El Niño events.
"Our research has showed that while the development of La Niña and El Niño events is chaotic ...
Selection drives functional evolution of large enzyme families
2013-09-11
Researchers at Umeå University in Sweden, together with researchers at the Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences, show in a new study how natural selection drives functional evolution of a large protein family in conifer trees. The study sheds light on the mechanisms and adaptive significance of gene family evolution.
Most structural and regulatory genes in eukaryotes are members of gene families. Over the course of evolution, some duplicate genes are short-lived, losing functionality and ultimately being removed. However, some duplicates persist and diversify ...
Mosquito bites deliver potential new malaria vaccine
2013-09-11
This study suggests that genetically engineered malaria parasites that are stunted through precise gene deletions (genetically attenuated parasites, or "GAP") could be used as a vaccine that protects against malaria infection. This means that the harmless (attenuated) version of the parasite would interact with the body in the same way as the infective version, but without possibility of causing disease. GAP-vaccination would induce robust immune responses that protect against future infection with malaria.
According to the World Health Organization, there were 219 million ...
New study discovers copper destroys highly infectious norovirus
2013-09-11
Scientists from the University of Southampton have discovered that copper and copper alloys rapidly destroy norovirus – the highly-infectious sickness bug.
Worldwide, norovirus is responsible for more than 267 million cases of acute gastroenteritis every year. In the UK, norovirus costs the National Health Service at least £100 million per year, in times of high incidence, and up to 3,000 people admitted to hospital per year in England.
There is no specific treatment or vaccine, and outbreaks regularly shut down hospital wards and care homes, requiring expensive deep-cleaning, ...
Airbrushing could facilitate large-scale manufacture of carbon nanofibers
2013-09-11
Researchers from North Carolina State University used airbrushing techniques to grow vertically aligned carbon nanofibers on several different metal substrates, opening the door for incorporating these nanofibers into gene delivery devices, sensors, batteries and other technologies.
"Because we're using an airbrush, this technique could easily be incorporated into large-scale, high-throughput manufacturing processes," says Dr. Anatoli Melechko, an adjunct associate professor of materials science and engineering at NC State and co-author of a paper describing the work. ...
Versatile microRNAs choke off cancer blood supply, suppress metastasis
2013-09-11
HOUSTON – A family of microRNAs (miR-200) blocks cancer progression and metastasis by stifling a tumor's ability to weave new blood vessels to support itself, researchers at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center report today in Nature Communications.
Patients with lung, ovarian, kidney or triple-negative breast cancers live longer if they have high levels of miR-200 expression, the researchers found.
Subsequent experiments showed for the first time that miR-200 hinders new blood vessel development, or angiogenesis, and does so by targeting cytokines interleukin-8 ...
Transplanting fat may be effective treatment for metabolic disease
2013-09-11
Transplanting fat may treat such inherited metabolic diseases as maple syrup urine disease (MSUD) by helping the body process the essential amino acids that these patients cannot, according to Penn State College of Medicine researchers.
The researchers are targeting maple syrup urine disease because it disproportionately affects the Amish and Mennonites who reside in the central Pennsylvania communities surrounding the College of Medicine and its hospital, Penn State Milton S. Hershey Medical Center.
The team transplanted up to two grams of fat into either abdomens ...
How schizophrenia affects the brain
2013-09-11
It's hard to fully understand a mental disease like schizophrenia without peering into the human brain. Now, a study by University of Iowa psychiatry professor Nancy Andreasen uses brain scans to document how schizophrenia impacts brain tissue as well as the effects of anti-psychotic drugs on those who have relapses.
Andreasen's study, published in the American Journal of Psychiatry, documented brain changes seen in MRI scans from more than 200 patients beginning with their first episode and continuing with scans at regular intervals for up to 15 years. The study is considered ...
Drug treatment means better, less costly care for children with sickle cell disease
2013-09-11
The benefits of hydroxyurea treatment in people with sickle cell disease are well known -- fewer painful episodes, fewer blood transfusions and fewer hospitalizations. Now new research from the Johns Hopkins Children's Center and other institutions reveals that by preventing such complications, the drug can also considerably lower the overall cost of medical care in children with this condition.
The cost-benefit analysis, described online Sept. 2 in the journal Pediatrics and believed to be the first of its kind in pediatric patients, showed that children whose standard ...
New system allows cloud customers to detect program-tampering
2013-09-11
CAMBRIDGE, Mass-- For small and midsize organizations, the outsourcing of demanding computational tasks to the cloud — huge banks of computers accessible over the Internet — can be much more cost-effective than buying their own hardware. But it also poses a security risk: A malicious hacker could rent space on a cloud server and use it to launch programs that hijack legitimate applications, interfering with their execution.
In August, at the International Cryptology Conference, researchers from MIT and Israel's Technion and Tel Aviv University presented a new system that ...