Tea And Exercise May Affect Depression In Breast Cancer Patients

Breast cancer patients who exercise and drink tea on a regular basis may be less likely to suffer from depression than other patients, according to a new study led by Xiao Ou Shu, M.D., Ph.D., professor of Medicine, Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center. Xiaoli Chen, M.D., a post-doctoral fellow, was first author of the study published in the January issue of the Journal of Clinical Oncology.

The study, conducted in collaboration with investigators from the Shanghai Institute of Preventive Medicine, examined 1,399 women enrolled in the Shanghai Breast Cancer Survival Study in China. Each woman was interviewed about her exercise and diet habits six months following a breast cancer diagnosis. The women were interviewed again approximately 18 months after diagnosis and they also reported on their depressive symptoms. Twenty-six percent of the women reported depression during the follow-up survey: 13.4 percent had mild depression and 12.6 percent had clinical depression.

Depression may reduce a patient’s quality of life, increase the length of hospital stays and affect compliance with cancer therapy.

“We found that all types of exercise decreased the risk for clinical depression,” said Shu. “Women who exercised for two or more hours per week, and those who expended more energy during exercise were less likely to have depression than women who did not exercise.”

Those patients who increased their exercise level during the follow-up period were 42 percent less likely to report overall depression. However, quitting exercise or reducing exercise was not related to increased depression. Read more

In Cancer-Ridden Rats, Loneliness Can Kill

Socially isolated female rats develop more tumors – and tumors of a more deadly type – than rats living in a social group, according to researchers at Yale University and the University of Chicago.

The dramatic increase in mammary tumors among isolated Norway rats – which, like humans, are a highly social species – illustrates how loneliness can be deadly, the authors report in findings to be published the week of December 6 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

“There is a growing interest in relationships between the environment, emotion and disease. This study offers insight into how the social world gets under the skin,” said Gretchen Hermes, first author of the paper and a resident in the Neurosciences Research Training Program in the Yale Department of Psychiatry.

The leading suspect seems to be stress, triggered by being separated from a group. Stress is linked to many negative health outcomes – including activation of cancer-promoting genes. The research team, led by senior author Martha K. McClintock at the University of Chicago, had previously shown that fearful and anxious rats were more prone to tumors and death. The new study shows that social isolation and neglect can trigger the fear and anxiety responsible for this susceptibility to cancer. Read more

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