Chemo causes lasting physical decline in breast cancer survivors

Breast cancer survivors treated with chemotherapy tend to suffer a longer-lasting decline in their physical health, compared to women who receive hormone therapy or other cancer treatments.

Chemotherapy patients reported a physical decline that extended more than two years after their diagnosis with breast cancer, researchers reported Feb. 28 in JAMA Network Open.

This decline included fatigue and reduced ability to carry out daily activities like walking, climbing stairs or carrying groceries, researchers said.

“If they do not receive chemotherapy, it is unlikely that they will have long-lasting physical health decline,” lead researcher Clara Bodelon, senior principal scientist of survivorship research at the American Cancer Society, said in a news release.

“This is encouraging news for breast cancer survivors,” she said.

For the study, researchers analyzed data on more than 2,500 women diagnosed with breast cancer, comparing them to more than 12,800 women without cancer.

“Patients with breast cancer suffer from an abundance of long-term and late health effects and are at risk of earlier onset disease and higher incidence of chronic health conditions,” Bodelon said.

About 48% of women with breast cancer received hormone-blocking therapy, 11% received chemotherapy, and 25% received both, researchers said.

Results showed a greater physical decline within two years of diagnosis for those breast cancer survivors who got hormone therapy, chemo or both, when compared to women without cancer.

However, the physical decline among hormone therapy patients was restricted solely to women treated with aromatase inhibitors, researchers found.

Those drugs lower estrogen levels by stopping an enzyme in fat tissue from changing other hormones into estrogen.

In addition, physical decline extended out more than two years only in women who received chemotherapy, the study says.

“These findings are important because understanding factors related to their physical health decline could lead to interventions to improve their health outcomes,” Bodelon said.

“However, further studies are needed to confirm these results and to better understand the health consequences of these treatments,” she concluded.

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