Safety and acceptability of exercise for Chronic Lymphocytic Leukaemia
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Evaluating the safety and acceptability of a progressive exercise training intervention for Chronic Lymphocytic Leukaemia: a randomised-controlled pilot trial.
IRAS ID
292564
Contact name
John Campbell
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
University of Bath
Clinicaltrials.gov Identifier
Duration of Study in the UK
1 years, 8 months, 31 days
Research summary
It is widely thought that regular exercise exerts anti-tumour effects against all cancers. At a population level, it is thought that regularly active people have a lower risk of developing cancer, and among regularly active patients, there is a lower incidence of relapse. Animal studies support this idea, and show that if you give mice different types of cancer, exercise slows cancer growth. Despite these important findings from animal research, it remains unknown in humans whether exercise can work in the same way and slow cancer growth. This problem exists mainly because most people diagnosed with cancer require treatment, so it is not possible to look at the effects of an exercise training program, on its own, against cancer. Our study aims to overcome these problems by investigating the effects of exercise in people with Chronic Lymphocytic Leukaemia (CLL) on a ‘watch-and-wait’ treatment regimen. CLL is a type of blood cancer, and it is the most common adult leukaemia in the UK. Most patients are diagnosed by chance, and have no disease symptoms, and as such, do not need urgent treatment and have no major health problems caused by their cancer. This means we can look at how exercise affects their cancer, without having to take into account the effects of cancer treatment or cancer-related health problems. In addition, patients with CLL have lots of tumour cells in their blood which means we can easily take blood samples to see how the cancer is affected by exercise, whereas with other cancers, surgery would be needed. Finally, by taking blood samples, we can store cancer cells to study the mechanisms by which exercise helps patients with CLL. Participants will be randomly allocated to a 16-week home-based exercise program or a control group, to determine if exercise is safe and acceptable.
REC name
London - Dulwich Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
21/LO/0217
Date of REC Opinion
27 Apr 2021
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion