Vigorous walking slows progression

[Admin]

In an earlier study Richman and his colleagues had shown that vigorous exercise was tied to fewer prostate cancer deaths.

Read about that here:

Vigorous walking and mortality

A criticism of that paper (that's what science is about - seeking the truth by exposing your results to criticism) was that metastatic men could not do vigorous exercise, and this would have spoiled the result.

So then this team looked at vigorous activity and progression - removing the problem of metastatic disease.

And vigorous activity for more that 3 hours a week came out on top again.

Men who walked briskly for 3 h/wk or more had a 57% lower rate of progression than men who walked at an easy pace for less than 3 h/wk.

Cancer Res. 2011 Jun 1;71(11):3889-95. Epub 2011 May 24.

Physical activity after diagnosis and risk of prostate cancer progression: data from the cancer of the prostate strategic urologic research endeavor.

Richman EL, Kenfield SA, Stampfer MJ, Paciorek A, Carroll PR, Chan JM.

Source

Department of Epidemiology, Harvard School of Public Health, Boston, Massachusetts, USA.

Abstract

Vigorous activity after diagnosis was recently reported to be inversely associated with prostate cancer-specific mortality. However, men with metastatic disease may decrease their activity due to their disease; thus, a causal interpretation is uncertain. We therefore prospectively examined vigorous activity and brisk walking after diagnosis in relation to risk of prostate cancer progression, an outcome less susceptible to reverse causation, among 1,455 men diagnosed with clinically localized prostate cancer. Cox proportional hazards regression was used to examine vigorous activity, nonvigorous activity, walking duration, and walking pace after diagnosis and risk of prostate cancer progression. We observed 117 events (45 biochemical recurrences, 66 secondary treatments, 3 bone metastases, 3 prostate cancer deaths) during 2,750 person-years. Walking accounted for nearly half of all activity. Men who walked briskly for 3 h/wk or more had a 57% lower rate of progression than men who walked at an easy pace for less than 3 h/wk (HR = 0.43; 95% CI: 0.21-0.91; P = 0.03). Walking pace was associated with decreased risk of progression independent of duration (HR brisk vs. easy pace = 0.52; 95% CI: 0.29-0.91; P(trend) = 0.01). Few men engaged in vigorous activity, but there was a suggestive inverse association (HR ≥3 h/wk vs. none = 0.63; 95% CI: 0.32-1.23; P(trend) = 0.17). Walking duration and total nonvigorous activity were not associated with risk of progression independent of pace or vigorous activity, respectively. Brisk walking after diagnosis may inhibit or delay prostate cancer progression among men diagnosed with clinically localized prostate cancer.

PMID: 21610110