How Exercise Stalls Cancer Growth Through the Immune System
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How exercise stalls cancer growth through the immune system:
Prior research has shown that physical activity can prevent unhealth as well as improve the prognosis of several diseases including various forms of cancer. Exactly how exercise exerts its protective effects against cancer is, however, still unknown, especially when it comes to the biological mechanisms. One plausible explanation is that physical activity activates the immune system and thereby bolsters the body's ability to prevent and inhibit cancer growth.
In this study, researchers at Karolinska Institutet expanded on this hypothesis by examining how the immune system's cytotoxic T cells, that is white blood cells specialized in killing cancer cells, respond to exercise.
They divided mice with cancer into two groups and let one group exercise regularly in a spinning wheel while the other remained inactive. The result showed that cancer growth slowed and mortality decreased in the trained animals compared with the untrained.
[...] In addition, the researchers examined how these metabolites change in response to exercise in humans. They took blood samples from eight healthy men after 30 minutes of intense cycling and noticed that the same training-induced metabolites were released in humans.
Journal Reference:
Helene Rundqvist, Pedro Velica, Laura Barbieri, et al. Cytotoxic T-cells mediate exercise-induced reductions in tumor growth, (DOI: 10.7554/eLife.59996)
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