Exercise helps colorectal cancer patients live as long as healthy people

Physical activity may help colorectal cancer survivors achieve long-term survival rates similar to people in the general population, according to a study published in the journal Cancer.

People with colorectal cancer face higher rates of premature mortality than people in the general population with relevant characteristics such as age and gender.

To assess whether exercise can reduce this disparity, researchers analyzed data from two post-treatment studies of 2,875 patients with stage 3 colorectal cancer who reported physical activity after cancer surgery and chemotherapy. The researchers also examined data from a comparable general population sample from the National Center for Health Statistics.

For all participants, physical activity was defined in metabolic equivalent (MET) hours per week. (Medical guidelines recommend 150 minutes of moderate-intensity exercise per week, which corresponds to approximately 8.0 MET•hours per week.)

When data from the first study (called CALGB 89803) were analyzed in patients who remained alive three years after cancer treatment, three-year overall survival rates for physical activity <3.0 MET•hours per week were 17.1% lower than in the matched general population, and for physical activity ≥18.0 MET•hours per week, three-year overall survival rates were only 3.5% lower than in the matched general population.

In a second study (CALGB 80702) among patients surviving three years, patients with <3.0 and ≥18.0 MET•hours per week had subsequent three-year overall survival rates 10.8% and 4.4% lower than in the matched general population, respectively.

In a pooled analysis of the two studies, among 1908 patients who were alive and free of cancer recurrence by the third year, those who exercised <3.0 and ≥18.0 MET•hours per week had 3.1% lower and 2.9% higher three-year subsequent overall survival rates than the general population, respectively.

Thus, cancer survivors who were tumor-free by the third year and exercised regularly achieved even better subsequent survival rates than in the comparable general population.

“This new information will help colorectal cancer patients realize that factors they can control – their physical activity level – can have a meaningful impact on their long-term prognosis,” said lead author Justin C. Brown, PhD, of the Pennington Biomedical Research Center and the Louisiana State University Health Science Center.

“In addition, health care providers, public health professionals, and politicians are constantly looking for new ways to communicate the benefits of a healthy lifestyle. Quantifying how physical activity can allow a patient with colorectal cancer to live about as long as their friends and family members without cancer can be a simple but powerful piece of information that can be used to help everyone understand the health benefits of physical activity.”