Walking pace among cancer survivors may be important for survival
Surveillance methods and interventions to improve cancer survivors' walking pace should be investigated
2021-03-04
(Press-News.org) A new study led by Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and the National Cancer Institute (NCI) has identified an association between slow walking pace and an increased risk of death among cancer survivors.
While the study does not establish that slow walking is a cause of death, the association persisted across at least nine tumor types. Investigators now call for more research into these relationships and whether targeted interventions such as physical activity programs could help cancer survivors improve their ability to walk and increase survival after cancer diagnosis and treatment.
The study, a collaboration between Washington University, the NCI of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the University of North Carolina and George Washington University, appears March 4 in Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research.
"Cancer survivors are living longer than ever - and that's good news," said first author Elizabeth A. Salerno, PhD, an assistant professor of surgery in the Division of Public Health Sciences at Washington University. "But it's important to improve our understanding of how the diagnosis and treatment of a broad range of cancers may affect walking pace during survivorship -- a potentially modifiable risk factor -- which could lead to new treatment and rehabilitation strategies to improve the health of these patients."
The researchers studied over 233,000 participants enrolled in the National Institutes of Health-American Association of Retired Persons (NIH-AARP) Diet and Health Study. Participants, who were ages 50 to 71, answered questionnaires about their overall health and walking pace, and whether they had any disability related to walking, such as walking at a very slow pace or being unable to walk. After the assessment, participants were followed for several years.
Compared with healthy controls enrolled in the study, cancer survivors were 42% more likely to report walking at the slowest pace and 24% more likely to report being disabled. Among cancer survivors, those who walked at the slowest pace had more than twofold increased risk of death from any cause, compared with those reporting the fastest walking pace.
The association between the slowest walking pace and a significantly increased risk of death from any cause held for nine cancer types, including breast, colon, melanoma, Non-Hodgkin lymphoma, oral, prostate, rectal, respiratory and urinary cancers. The association between mobility disability (not just slow pace) and death was even stronger and included all nine of the cancers mentioned above, plus endometrial, endocrine, ovarian and stomach cancers.
While slow walking pace also was linked to increased mortality that was due to any cause among individuals without a cancer diagnosis, the risk of death more than doubled for cancer survivors. Compared with individuals without a cancer diagnosis who walked at the fastest pace, cancer survivors who walked the slowest had more than tenfold increased risk of death from any cause. Cancer survivors with mobility disability had more than fivefold increased risk of death compared with individuals with no cancer diagnosis or disability.
The researchers noted that cancer survivors reported difficulties walking five years or more after cancer diagnosis and treatment, suggesting that the detrimental effects of cancer diagnosis and therapy are widespread across cancer types and long lasting, creating opportunities for intervening to help such patients improve their walking ability and pace.
"To our knowledge, this analysis is the first to explore the relationship between cancer, walking pace and subsequent mortality in 15 different cancer types," said Salerno, who conducted this research while a postdoctoral researcher at the NCI. "Next steps include identifying the underlying reasons for these associations. It's possible that slow walking may be due to the cancer itself, adverse effects of treatment, or changes in lifestyle. There is still much to be learned about these complex relationships, but our results highlight the importance of monitoring and even targeting walking pace after cancer."
INFORMATION:
This work was supported by the Intramural Research Program of the National Cancer Institute (NCI) of the National Institutes of Health (NIH).
Salerno EA, et al. Ambulatory function and mortality among cancer survivors in the NIH-AARP Diet and Health Study. Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention. March 4, 2021.
Washington University School of Medicine's 1,500 faculty physicians also are the medical staff of Barnes-Jewish and St. Louis Children's hospitals. The School of Medicine is a leader in medical research, teaching and patient care, ranking among the top 10 medical schools in the nation by U.S. News & World Report. Through its affiliations with Barnes-Jewish and St. Louis Children's hospitals, the School of Medicine is linked to BJC HealthCare.
ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:
2021-03-04
The loss of seagrass in the waters around the UK is much higher than previously estimated. A new study published in Frontiers in Plant Science concludes that, with high certainty, at least 44% of the UK's seagrasses have been lost since 1936, of which 39% has been since the 1980s. This study is one of the first of its kind to bring together seagrass data from diverse sources and give a systematic estimate of the current and historic extent of seagrass, as well as seagrass loss in the UK.
The study was a collaboration between researchers at University College London, Kings College London, and Swansea University.
Seagrasses as climate change superheroes
Nature-based solutions are essential to mitigate the effects of the climate crisis, and seagrasses are highly ...
2021-03-04
(Boston)--Children in Zambia under age 5 die at a rate that is between nearly six to more than 10 times higher than those in the U.S; it is estimated at 40-75 per 1000, compared to 6.98 per 1000. Identifying why these children are dying is the mission of Rotem Lapidot, MD, assistant professor of pediatrics at Boston University School of Medicine (BUSM).
"Significantly, over 80 percent of all community infant deaths involved some form of delay. While it is impossible to know what would have occurred in the absence of such delays, the majority of infant deaths in Lusaka, the capital of Zambia, are from causes for which effective treatments currently exist," explained Lapidot, the corresponding author on the study ...
2021-03-04
The far-reaching mobility restrictions at the beginning of the Corona pandemic in March 2020 created a unique situation for atmospheric sciences: "During the 2020 lockdown, we were able to directly investigate the actual effects of drastic traffic restrictions on the distribution of air pollutants and on the emission of climate gases," says Innsbruck atmospheric scientist Thomas Karl. With his team, he has now published a detailed analysis of air quality during the first lockdown in the city of Innsbruck, Austria, in the journal Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics. "We find significantly greater decreases of air pollutants than of carbon dioxide, for example," the researcher says, summarizing the results. In the past year, some studies showed contradicting ...
2021-03-04
Tiny photonic devices could be used to find new exoplanets, monitor our health, and make the internet more energy efficient. Researchers from Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden, now present a game changing microcomb that could bring advanced applications closer to reality.
A microcomb is a photonic device capable of generating a myriad of optical frequencies - colours - on a tiny cavity known as microresonator. These colours are uniformly distributed so the microcomb behaves like a 'ruler made of light'. The device can be used to measure or generate frequencies with extreme precision.
In a recent article in the journal ...
2021-03-04
Using data collected in a NASA Langley Mach 6 wind tunnel, researchers at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign replicated the hypersonic flow conditions of a compression ramp flow by means of Direct Numerical Simulation. The simulation yielded an abundance of additional data, which can be used to better understand the phenomena that occur surrounding vehicles traveling at hypersonic speeds.
"Data from experiments are somewhat limited--for example taken from pressure probes at a few locations on a test object. When we run a numerical simulation, we acquire information - such as pressure, temperature, ...
2021-03-04
A rapid microbiological point-of-care test to diagnose respiratory infections has proved popular with GPs and could reduce antibiotic prescribing in primary care, according to a National Institute for Health Research funded study by researchers at the Centre for Academic Primary Care, University of Bristol.
There are high rates of antibiotic prescribing in primary care and the UK government has called for the introduction of rapid diagnostics to curb overuse.
The RAPID-TEST study, published in the journal Family Practice today [4 March] evaluated ...
2021-03-04
Scientists at the Francis Crick Institute and UCL have identified the trigger of a key cellular change in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), a type of motor neurone disease. The findings could help develop new treatments for many neurological diseases with the same change, including Parkinson's and Alzheimer's.
When the nervous system is injured, diseased or infected, star-shaped cells, called astrocytes, undergo 'reactive' changes in their behaviour. Whilst some of these reactive astrocytes become protective, others become harmful and damage surrounding motor neurons.
Reactive astrocytes are observed in various neurodegenerative diseases including ALS, but there is a lack of understanding about what causes astrocytes to ...
2021-03-04
The Wellcome Trust, one of the world's top funders of health research, stands to gain financially from the covid-19 pandemic, raising questions about transparency and accountability, reports The BMJ today.
Independent journalist Tim Schwab shows how the charity plays a leading role in a WHO programme to support new covid-19 therapeutics, while holding investments in companies producing these same treatments.
It follows news reports that another charity, the Gates Foundation, is also positioned to potentially benefit financially from its leading role in the pandemic response.
Financial disclosures from late 2020 show that Wellcome has a £275m stake in Novartis, which manufactures dexamethasone, and a £252m ...
2021-03-04
More than three quarters (78%) of hospitals surveyed between June and August 2020 reported that their paediatric cancer care had been affected by the pandemic.
Almost half (43%) made fewer new cancer diagnoses than expected, while around one third (34%) noted a rise in the number of patients abandoning treatment.
Nearly one in ten (7%) closed their paediatric cancer units completely at some stage during the pandemic.
Hospitals in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) were disproportionately affected, with unavailability of chemotherapy, treatment abandonment, and disrupted radiotherapy among issues more frequently reported.
The COVID-19 pandemic has had major impacts on childhood cancer care worldwide, ...
2021-03-04
Daily infusions of albumin provide no significant health benefit to patients hospitalised with advanced liver disease, over and above 'standard care', finds a large-scale multicentre trial led by UCL researchers.
Albumin is a protein made in the liver that prevents fluid leaking from the bloodstream to other body tissues and carries various substances throughout the body, such as hormones or enzymes. In people with liver disease, low albumin levels are associated with an increased risk of death among hospitalised patients who have cirrhosis, and laboratory studies have shown albumin to have an anti-inflammatory effect. Therefore, albumin infusions are considered the best fluid for patients with cirrhosis and are an integral part of clinical care.
Explaining the ATTIRE* trial, Principal ...
LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES:
[Press-News.org] Walking pace among cancer survivors may be important for survival
Surveillance methods and interventions to improve cancer survivors' walking pace should be investigated
