Posted on 06/04/2022 12:16:58 PM PDT by ConservativeMind
Aerobic exercise reprograms the immune system to reduce pancreatic tumor growth and amplify the effects of immunotherapy, a study finds.
The study provides new insight into how the mammalian immune system, designed to attack foreign invaders like bacteria, can also recognize cancer cells as abnormal. Exercise-induced increases in levels of the hormone adrenalin cause changes to the immune system, say the study authors, including in the activity of cells that respond to signaling protein interleukin-15 (IL-15).
Biological systems that fight disease and repair tissue are intertwined, the researchers say, with IL-15 signaling, based on the context, either encouraging the recovery of muscles after exercise or, in the case of the current work, amplifying immune attack on pancreatic cancer cells.
The study found that exercise promotes the survival of CD8 T cells sensitive to IL-15, and doubles the number of them homing to pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) tumors in mice. Such "effector" T cells have been shown to be capable of killing cancer cells. Other tests found that aerobic exercise for 30 minutes five times a week reduced the rate of cancer formation by 50 percent in one mouse model of PDAC, and reduced tumor weight by 25 percent in another model, in which mice ran on treadmills for three weeks.
The study authors then found that human patients who exercised before surgery to remove their pancreatic tumors had more CD8 effector T cells that expressed a protein called granzyme B, which confers tumor-cell killing ability. Also in that trial, those patients who exercised and had more of these cell types had 50% percent higher overall survival over five years than patients with fewer of them.
"Our findings show, for the first time, how aerobic exercise affects the immune microenvironment within pancreatic tumors," says first author Emma Kurz, MD, Ph.D.
(Excerpt) Read more at medicalxpress.com ...
25% reduction of tumor weight in three weeks, when this cancer can kill in months? This is a great opportunity for patients.
If you have the strength to do aerobic exercise with Pancreatic Cancer.
Honestly, any best effort would get your heart rate up, even if only walking or brisk walking as fast as you could.
I’m gonna have to lay down and take a nap and think about this one.
I’ve read that exercise generally strengthens the immune system.
Generally people that exercise, or start, also make positive changes in their diet.
My first thought too
Since most PC is not found until it’s metaticized I don’t how effective a treatment such as this would be.
And based on the minuscule survival rates for tumors in the head of the pancreas, I doubt anyone is going to settle on a brisk walk. Unless it’s a briar walk to an oncologist and surgeon.
Your comment is so off the mark it’s scary.
This report was about mice. Mice aren’t people.
And if it’s stage 4, high aerobic exercise is not really likely.
My wife has pancreatic cancer (you are never really cured.)
At diagnosis eating is difficult. This is a preliminary study on rodents. It is said among cancer researchers that they have been able to cure cancer among mice for decades. Curing it among people is the hard part.
I am not saying the research is useless, but the treatment for pancreatic cancer is, if you are lucky, surgery that completely reroutes your digestive system followed by six months of chemo that will likely kill you. And then the 5 year SEER is still about 10%.
Lol
Yet another government funded grant study.
This is another total racket that has been going on and on for decades and decades
Seems like exercise is good for everything. For those with pancreatic cancer too weak to exercise, well OTC Sudafed is epinephrine (adrenaline), which is the mechanism involved, so they could take that instead.
The study writeup also describes how more limited exercise in humans, prior to surgery, had a 50% higher survival rate five years afterwards.
You are out to lunch.
I think I know a tad bit more about this than you.
Do you have any concept of how PC is diagnosed? And stayed?
You think you can read an article and pontificate. Try living through it.
We have both known people with it in the past, and today.
My spouse doesn’t have it, but my friend does. They’ve given him “a couple months,” but I am giving him the studies I can find to help him, including something his doctor is going to now add to his chemo, again, from a study a few years back, that he didn’t read.
It should improve his Stage 4 chemo by by quite a bit. In the study, Stage 4 40% of pancreatic cancer patients lived at least two years.
“It should improve his Stage 4 chemo by by quite a bit. In the study, Stage 4 40% of pancreatic cancer patients lived at least two years.”
That’s what happens when I type when someone knocks at the door and I blurt out my words.
It should have read, “It should improve his Stage 4 chemo by quite a bit. In the study of those with Stage 4, 40% of pancreatic cancer patients lived at least two years.”
“ And based on the minuscule survival rates for tumors in the head of the pancreas, I doubt anyone is going to settle on a brisk walk. Unless it’s a briar walk to an oncologist and surgeon.”
As a cancer patient who is seen by an expert at the #1 cancer center in the country I can tell you that PC is treatable. Most cancer patients accept being seen at their local cancer center and for something as deadly as PC the results will not be good if that is the path chosen. In fact, that is true for most any cancer not just PC.
Also, I was on chemotherapy for six months. It was no walk in the park, but I continued my exercise plan even if it was scaled back. So far, it has kept me going very well.
My wife was in peak fitness when diagnosed with PC. Fitness may have nominal effect in some cases, but this form of cancer still takes out over 95% within 5 yrs.
You’d better be really fit just to recover from Whipple surgery.
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