Child Cancer Survivors Too Sedentary

Researchers from St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital have found that survivors of childhood cancers are at higher risk for obesity, heart disease, and type 2 diabetes than their siblings who did not have cancer. The risk exists because the survivors tend to be more sedentary than the siblings.

The study, done across medical centers in the United States and Canada, looked at over 20,000 childhood cancer survivors. From those 20,000 people, over 9000 survey responses were received and analyzed, and these were compared to almost 3000 responses from siblings. The researchers were looking for the type of lifestyle the survivors led compared with their siblings.

According to this article, Childhood Cancer Survivors Exercise Less, Increasing Diabetes Risk,

Cancer treatments such as cranial radiation can damage the hypothalamus and pituitary; the result is an abnormal metabolism, which increases the risk of obesity and diabetes. Also, chemotherapy with the drug anthracycline increases the risk of heart disease; and radiation to the body can cause blood vessels to become less pliant.

Therefore, it’s even more important for cancer survivors to be as physically active as possible, one would think. However, that wasn’t what was found. Only 77% of cancer survivors were active over the previous month, compared with 86% of the siblings.

Of course, to be fair, the researchers had to take into account the types of cancers the survivors had and what the treatment results were. For example, someone with amputations may not be able to be as physically active as a sibling. As well, certain types of cancers, such as medulloblastoma (a brain tumor) and osteosarcoma (bone cancer) seemed to result in more sedentary lifestyles.

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