Randomized Trial of a Physical Activity Intervention in
Women With Metastatic Breast Cancer was the official title
Then there was the completely misleading title in practiceupdate.com:
Exercise No Aid to Functioning With Advanced Breast Cancer
Shame on them.
I would title this study: Too Little, Too Late
Finding: There was no significant improvement in “physical
functioning” in women in the exercise group.
Participants were recruited between September 2006 and March
2011. This study took five years to publish.
There were 101 women initially enrolled in the study but
three were dropped before it began.
Consequently baseline data was collected for 98 women (47 in exercise and 51 in control group).
Consequently baseline data was collected for 98 women (47 in exercise and 51 in control group).
The average time since metastatic disease for those in the
exercise group was 26.4 months and in the control group was 20.4 months. If I
look back on how I felt six months ago, that feels like a lifetime.
There was enormous attrition with 30 patients who did not
complete the entire study (20 from the exercise group and 10 from the control
group).
That left 27 in the exercise group and 41 in the control
group who completed the entire study, including the treadmill test. Not
surprisingly, women having chemotherapy or had the metastatic diagnosis for a
longer period were more likely to not complete the exercise intervention.
Women in the intervention group increased their exercise by
64.2 minutes a week compared to the control group of 46 minutes a week (2.6
minutes a day by the exercise group if you are not subtracting).
If you add number of minutes exercise at baseline with the
increase in minutes then the control group actually ended up doing more
exercise than the treatment group (125.2 min/week vs 119.9). Are we still
surprised that there was no difference in outcomes?
My conclusion: Women with only a few months to live are not
interested in fighting the fatigue of treatment to start exercising for no
known benefit when they have not been exercising before. If there is a Razzie
for bullshit science, this gets my nomination.
