Friday, December 15, 2023, 9:26 a.m
People who follow cancer prevention recommendations live longer. To date, there has been little research into whether this also applies to cancer patients after diagnosis. Scientists from the German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ) and the University Hospital Hamburg-Eppendorf (UKE) have now shown that breast cancer patients and unaffected women benefit equally from a healthy lifestyle.
Modifiable lifestyle factors have a proven impact on survival rates. There has been little research to date as to whether this statement also applies to cancer patients after diagnosis. A team led by scientists from the DKFZ and the UKE has now been able to answer this question for breast cancer patients after menopause. The researchers used the data from the MARIE study. This population-based case-control study with over 10,000 participants was conducted to identify possible risk factors for the development of breast cancer after menopause.
The current analysis included 8,534 women, around a third of whom had received a breast cancer diagnosis between 2002 and 2005. The follow-up extended until 2020.
Based on lifestyle self-reports, study participants were divided into three groups based on how closely they followed the World Cancer Research Fund (WCRF) cancer prevention recommendations. The WCRF recommends, among other things, avoiding tobacco and alcohol, as well as a healthy diet, sufficient physical activity and a healthy body weight.
The team from Hamburg and Heidelberg now determined that there were significantly fewer deaths among the women with the healthiest lifestyle within the 16 years of follow-up than among the participants who had least adhered to the WCRF recommendations. This applied to both overall mortality and cancer mortality or mortality from cardiovascular disease. The differences were significant: for every hundred deaths in the group that least followed the prevention recommendations, there were only 54 deaths in the group of participants with the healthiest lifestyle.
The important news was that this applied equally to women with a breast cancer diagnosis as well as to study participants from the control group. “Our message to all patients is therefore: It pays off in years of life to maintain a healthy lifestyle – even after a breast cancer diagnosis,” says lead author Kathleen Gali from UKE.
“Overall, however, the MARIE participants only achieved an average score when implementing the recommendations for cancer prevention,” says senior author Jenny Chang-Claude. “This applies to women with and without a history of breast cancer.” In previous studies it had been observed that women adhered more to prevention recommendations for a short time immediately after a breast cancer diagnosis, but this effect did not last long. “Even more intensive information and advice for women during tumor follow-up care could convince those affected that they can benefit from a healthy lifestyle even after a breast cancer diagnosis.”
Kathleen Gali, Ester Orban, Ann-Kathrin Ozga, Annika Möhl, Sabine Behrens, Bernd Holleczek, Heiko Becher, Nadia Obi, Jenny Chang-Claude: Does breast cancer modify the long-term relationship between lifestyle behaviors and mortality? A prospective analysis of breast cancer survivors and population-based control
Cancer 2023, DOI 10.1002/cncr.35104.
With more than 3,000 employees, the German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ) is the largest biomedical research institution in Germany. At the DKFZ, scientists research how cancer develops, record cancer risk factors and look for new strategies that prevent people from developing cancer. They are developing new methods with which tumors can be diagnosed more precisely and cancer patients can be treated more successfully. At the DKFZ Cancer Information Service (KID), those affected, interested parties and specialist groups can receive individual answers to all questions about cancer.
In order to transfer promising approaches from cancer research to the clinic and thus improve the chances of patients, the DKFZ operates translation centers together with excellent university hospitals and research institutions throughout Germany:
National Center for Tumor Diseases (NCT, 6 locations)
German Consortium for Translational Cancer Research (DKTK, 8 locations)
Hopp Children’s Tumor Center (KiTZ) Heidelberg
Helmholtz Institute for Translational Oncology (HI-TRON) Mainz – a Helmholtz Institute of the DKFZ
DKFZ-Hector Cancer Institute at the University Medical Center Mannheim
National Cancer Prevention Center (together with German Cancer Aid)
The DKFZ is financed 90 percent by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research and 10 percent by the state of Baden-Württemberg and is a member of the Helmholtz Association of German Research Centers.