Reveal the benefits of exercise in children with cancer
A child with Cancer It seems the worst news. Therefore, whenever improvements are found in the quality of life of these children, they mean hope for many suffering parents. Recently, it has been shown that physical exercise through an intrahospital training program in pediatric patients with solid tumors undergoing chemotherapy improves their general health status, increasing their strength and muscle mass.
This is one of the main conclusions of an investigation carried out by the Niño Jesús Hospital, the European University of Madrid, the Twelve October Research Institute and the La Paz Hospital. According to Diario Médico, the work was launched with the aim of seeing the effects of physical exercise in pediatric patients and has been awarded the National Prize for Research in Sports Medicine that calls for the Oviedo University.
Training in a childhood with a tumor
To carry out their work, the researchers recruited a total of 25 patients between four and 18 years old. The intense training program began at the beginning of treatment with chemotherapy to observe its effect on the functional capacity and immune response of patients.
Alejandro Lucía, professor at the European University of Madrid, and senior author of the work explains that the training, with a duration of 19 weeks on average, consisted of three weekly sessions of one and a half hours each of them. aerobic exercise and strength exercise.
"Training was maintained even in cases in which patients had to be isolated because they were neutropenic and they could not access the gym, "says the lead author, who adds that these patients had an alternative training program that they could develop in their room" using static bicycles and dumbbells with all the sterilized material instead of conventional machines. "
The first thing the researchers observed was that this training program was safe, because no adverse effects were registered and, on the contrary, an increase in the force statistically significant. "We saw that in the control arm the general physical condition of children worsened as a result of chemotherapy and in the patients undergoing training improved, increasing their strength and muscle mass by around 25%, and also their energy, without that the immune function was altered ", explains the researcher.
The expert says that this last aspect was important "because physical exercise consumes energy and the immune system needs a lot of energy to function properly". With this research, the authors could verify that the energy needed for both tasks did not enter competition "and we did not find an additional over-inflammation," he adds.
The effects of increasing the muscle mass on the physical state and general health are very important since, as this expert comments, "a greater reserve of proteins for the immune system is achieved". The relevance of this is meridian: "We know that it is a health indicator phenotype in the population in general and in sick people in particular," he confirms.
Self-esteem when you are sick
Another outstanding aspect to take into account of this work is that the researchers They found that children who followed the training program "increased their self-esteem because they detected improvement, which enhanced their confidence." Like positive effect also important found "a better tolerance to the chemotherapy treatment".
To conclude, Lucia advocates contemplating the introduction of in-hospital training programs as a coadjuvant in the treatment regimen of pediatric patients with solid tumors. According to this expert, this "must be an aspect to be taken into account due to its impact on the general condition of health and its good relationship cost-benefit", ends.
Damián Montero
