Abstract
Exercise is recommended for the healthy population as it increases fitness and prevents diseases. Moreover, exercise is also applied as an adjunct therapy for patients with various chronic diseases including cancer. Childhood cancer is a rare, heterogeneous disease that differs from adult cancer. Improved therapeutic strategies have increased childhood cancer survival rates to above 80% in developed countries. Although this is higher than the average adult cancer survival rate of about 50%, therapy results often in substantial long-term side effects in childhood cancer survivors. Exercise in adult cancer patients has many beneficial effects and may slow down tumor progression and improve survival in some cancer types, suggesting that exercise may influence cancer cell behavior. In contrast to adults, there is not much data on general effects of exercise in children. Whilst it seems possible that exercise might delay cancer progression or improve survival in children as well, there is no reliable data yet to support this hypothesis. Depending on the type of cancer, animal studies of adult cancer types show that the exercise-induced increase of the catecholamines epinephrine and norepinephrine, have suppressive as well as promoting effects on cancer cells. The diverse effects of exercise in adult cancer patients require investigating whether these results can be achieved in children with cancer.
Highlights
AND BACKGROUNDChildhood cancer contributes about 1% to all malignant diseases worldwide [1] and the incidence rate of cancer in children aged 0–19 years in the USA from 1975 to 2016 varies between 14.7 and 19.3 cases per 100,000 per year with an increasing trend [2]
The success in survival rates regarding childhood cancer has been achieved by a better understanding of the biology, improved diagnostics, stratification based on biomarkers as well as monitoring of disease and treatment [3] and by the high adherence rate to clinical studies [4]
Around 37,000 survivors of childhood cancer are subjected to long-term follow-up programs in Germany [6] and more than 430,000 survivors of childhood cancer are living in the USA [7], representing 0.05% and 0.13% of the whole population, respectively
Summary
Childhood cancer contributes about 1% to all malignant diseases worldwide [1] and the incidence rate of cancer in children aged 0–19 years in the USA from 1975 to 2016 varies between 14.7 and 19.3 cases per 100,000 per year with an increasing trend [2]. Cancer studies long-term effects to optimize the quality of care and to improve the quality of life for childhood cancer survivors (www.ighg.org). Adult and childhood cancer differs regarding incidence and survival, and with respect to biological features [9]. This needs to be considered when transferring exercise oncology evidence from adults to children
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
