Loading
In CHALLENGE, three years of supervised, goal-based exercise after adjuvant chemotherapy for colon cancer reduced recurrence or death by 28% and deaths by 37%, the first randomised proof that exercise itself improves cancer survival.
CHALLENGE (CCTG CO.21) randomised 889 patients with resected stage III or high-risk stage II colon cancer who had completed adjuvant chemotherapy to a 3-year structured exercise programme (behavioural support and supervised sessions, targeting an increase of at least 10 MET-hours per week) or to health-education materials alone. The primary endpoint was disease-free survival.
After a median follow-up of nearly 8 years, 5-year DFS was 80.3% with exercise versus 73.9% with education (HR 0.72). Eight-year overall survival was 90.3% versus 83.2% (HR 0.63). Physical functioning improved and musculoskeletal adverse events were more common in the exercise arm.
This is the first phase 3 trial to show that an exercise intervention, rather than exercise as a correlate, lengthens survival in cancer.
For colon cancer survivors, a prescribed, supported exercise programme is now an evidence-based treatment with a survival benefit comparable to many drugs. Health systems will need to fund exercise consultants as they fund chemotherapy. The trial does not tell us whether unsupervised advice achieves the same.
Shares Pay for supervised exercise the way we pay for drugs, Structured exercise prescribed like a drug in all curative-intent cancer care, CHALLENGE (CCTG CO.21), Supportive care and survivorship roadmap: making treatment bearable → proving it extends life → caring for tens of millions afterwards.
Shares Structured exercise prescribed like a drug in all curative-intent cancer care, Supportive care and survivorship roadmap: making treatment bearable → proving it extends life → caring for tens of millions afterwards, Exercise & lifestyle oncology, Funding follows fashion, not burden.
Shares Christopher M. Booth, Canadian Cancer Trials Group (CCTG), Colorectal cancer.
Shares Pay for supervised exercise the way we pay for drugs, Structured exercise prescribed like a drug in all curative-intent cancer care, CHALLENGE (CCTG CO.21), What actually works after treatment.
Shares Kerry S. Courneya, Canadian Cancer Trials Group (CCTG), Colorectal cancer.
Shares Structured exercise prescribed like a drug in all curative-intent cancer care, Supportive care and survivorship roadmap: making treatment bearable → proving it extends life → caring for tens of millions afterwards, Exercise & lifestyle oncology, Funding follows fashion, not burden.
Shares Structured exercise prescribed like a drug in all curative-intent cancer care, Exercise & lifestyle oncology, Survivorship and late effects are neglected.
Shares Fund structured exercise after colon cancer surgery as a treatment, because a randomised trial says it works as well as a drug, Combine the new anti-wasting antibody with exercise and protein, Pay for supervised exercise the way we pay for drugs, Structured exercise prescribed like a drug in all curative-intent cancer care.