Exercise Oncology: the value of exercise among cancer patients and survivors

The World Health Organization reported increases in cancer incidence and considers this disease a health concern, as it represents a threat to life expectancy increase. Therapies and cancer side effects are positively impacted by exercise interventions. Research investigating exercise effects on cancer symptoms and therapies’ side effects or cancer survival has been classified as “Exercise Oncology”. The benefits of exercise have been largely demonstrated for common cancer types, and guidelines have been produced by several healthcare and exercise science institutions. The American College of Sports Medicine suggests a minimum of three times/week (30 min/session) of moderate aerobic training together with 2 sessions/week of resistance training (8–15 repetitions at 60% of 1-Repetition Maximum) for all cancer survivors. The same institution also emphasizes the need to individualize exercise interventions to cancer types and treatment highlighting the need to investigate more. For this reason, this thesis focuses on exercise oncology studies. Chapter II will summarize studies not directly including cancer patients but exploring potential relevant outcomes or interventions for this population. Two original investigations are here reported proposing the assessment of an easy-to-administer cardiovascular health test and the implementation of a manual therapy that can replace classic stretching interventions. In the same chapter a narrative review assessing the influence of different exercise types on tissue stiffness, a parameter which can be related to cancer onset and symptoms. Chapter III summarizes exercise oncology studies carried out during the PhD course. A total of 5 studies are presented involving breast (2) lung (1) or mixed cancer patients and survivors (2). A review and an original investigation have been proposed for breast cancer. A systematic review only is reported for lung cancer patients and survivors. Two more investigations have been summarized within this chapter, targeting samples with mixed cancer diagnoses, of which one is also a systematic review and one is an original investigation. The review target resistance training benefits on sleep variables. In conclusion, the studies shown in this thesis provided promising results highlighting the benefits of exercise intervention in the cancer population on a wide variety of outcomes. Interestingly, resistance training seems to be valuable in improving physical fitness variables and sleep quality. The field of exercise oncology should still advance on less studied cancer types and outcomes to provide exhaustive guidelines for clinical operators and exercise specialists.