Scientists found that exercise stimulated significant improvements in the number and function of blood vessels around the breast tumors, improving oxygen flow to the cancer site. Among the mice that exercised, tumor growth was significantly slower than growth in the sedentary mice, and tumor cell death was 1.5 times higher. The density of small blood vessels was approximately 60% higher in exercised mice compared to the controls, and oxygen transport improved, leading to less oxygen starvation of the cancer tissue. The vasculature in the breast tumors also looked and behaved more normally.
"We set about to see whether exercise would affect the tumor perfusion, and could not have guessed that it would be as effective as it was. We were truly amazed by these findings. I have spent the better part of the last 30 years trying to figure out how to eliminate hypoxia in tumors, and have looked at a lot of different approaches- drugs, hyperthermia and metabolic manipulations. None has worked very well, and in some cases, made things worse. So these findings with exercise are quite encouraging," said co-senior author Mark W. Dewhirst, DVM, Ph.D, the Gustavo S. Montana Professor of Radiation Oncology and vice director for Basic Science at DCI.
The study is published in the 'Journal of the National Cancer Institute'.
Source: Medindia
