Friday, February 3, 2012 a team of researchers at UC San Francisco presented new research about why exercise benefits prostate cancer patients: it's in the genes.
In a meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) in San Francisco, senior author of the study, June Chan, ScD, presented research that studied the healthy prostate tissue of men with low-grade prostate cancer.
The team identified 184 genes that are linked to vigorous exercise. 109 genes were more active, and 75 were less active among the men who exercised vigorously for at least three hours a week compared to those who exercised less.
Exercise has long been considered beneficial in the prevention of prostate cancer and research has increasingly furthered the understanding that exercise is the "wonder drug" for cancer patients. Also Read: Epigenetics diet - broccoli, cabbage may help treat cancer.
Exercise three or more hours a week
This latest UCSF study builds on two studies released in 2011 by UCSF and Harvard School of Public Health showing that brisk walking or vigorous exercise such as jogging for three or more hours a week was linked to a lowered risk of prostate cancer progression and death after diagnosis. Those earlier studies, however, offered no explanation as to why.
According to the National Cancer Institute, more than 217,000 U.S. men are diagnosed with the disease, and some 32,000 men die from prostate cancer, each year. After skin cancer, prostate cancer is the most commonly diagnosed type of cancer among men in the United States.
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