Examining the Effects of Exercise Training on Tumor Response to Nithracycline-Based Chemotherapy

摘要

Exercise is becoming readily accepted as a beneficial adjunct therapy to maintain or enhance quality of life in breast cancer patients during adjuvant chemotherapy. An essential precursor to these studies is to investigate whether exercise modulates the antitumor efficacy of chemotherapeutic agents. Athymic female mice were transplanted with MDA-MB-231 breast xenografts and randomly assigned to one of four groups (n= 21 per group): (i) control, (ii) exercise only, (iii) doxorubicin only, or (iv) exercise + doxorubicin. Exercise groups performed progressive treadmill running up to 18m/min at 0% grade for 45mins, 5 days/wk for 8 weeks. Tumor growth delay was significantly longer in the doxorubicin only and exercise + doxorubicin groups compared with the control (median 42 vs. 25 days, p=0.0082; 36 vs. 25 days, p=0.029, respectively) and exercise only groups (median 42 vs. 25 days, p=0.029; 36 vs. 25 days, p=0.080, respectively). There was no significant difference between doxorubicin only and exercise + doxorubicin groups (median 42 vs. 36 days, p=0.33) suggesting that moderate intensity exercise does not significantly influence doxorubicin-induced tumor growth delay.