Daijiworld Media Network – Chicago

Chicago, Jun 2: A landmark international study has found that a structured three-year exercise programme significantly improved survival and reduced cancer recurrence among colon cancer patients—offering hope and prompting calls to make physical activity part of routine cancer care.

The first-of-its-kind randomised controlled trial, presented at the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) meeting in Chicago and published in the New England Journal of Medicine, followed 889 patients who had completed chemotherapy for treatable colon cancer.

Patients who worked with fitness coaches over three years had 28% fewer cancer recurrences and 37% fewer deaths from any cause, compared to those who received only educational material. The programme encouraged activities like brisk walking for about 45 minutes several times a week.

“This is about as high a quality of evidence as you can get,” said Dr Julie Gralow, ASCO’s chief medical officer. “It’s something I’ve long promoted, but now the data proves it.”

The study spanned Canada, Australia, the UK, Israel, and the US. Participants in the exercise group received bi-weekly coaching in the first year and monthly follow-ups for the next two years. Many found motivation and consistency through personal support.

“I wouldn’t want to go there and say, ‘I didn’t do anything,’ so I was always doing something,” said Terri Swain-Collins, 62, of Ontario, who took part in the programme and continues walking in her countryside home.

Study co-author Dr Christopher Booth said the findings were “astounding,” noting that such interventions cost only a few thousand dollars per patient far less than many cancer drugs.

Researchers are now analysing blood samples to understand how exercise might help, whether through immune response, insulin regulation, or other mechanisms.

“Now we can say definitively exercise causes improvements in survival,” said Kerry Courneya, co-author and exercise-oncology expert at the University of Alberta.