Abstract B47: A home-based motivational exercise intervention for African American breast cancer survivors: A pilot study.
Authors: Spector Denise , Deal Allison M. , Yang Hojin , Battaglini Claudio 
Published: August 2014

Background: Compared with White breast cancer survivors, African American (AA) survivors engage in less physical activity following diagnosis and treatment. Exercise intervention studies have shown that regular physical activity is associated with improvements in physical function, cardiopulmonary fitness, muscle strength, fatigue, mood, and overall quality of life (QOL) in breast cancer survivors. Researchers have found that AA breast cancer survivors who met recommended physical activity levels reported significantly better physical and psychological QOL than those not meeting recommendations. Research on the benefits of exercise in breast cancer survivor's outcomes continues to grow, but further research is needed on how best to deliver exercise programs to AA survivors. The objectives of this study were to determine whether AA participants of a 4-month home-based motivational exercise intervention increase their physical activity and explore whether exercise has a positive impact on health and fitness.

Methods: Seventeen AA breast cancer survivors, stage 0-IIIa, who were within 2 years of completing primary cancer treatments were recruited for this 16 week home-based progressive aerobic and resistance training exercise pilot study. To date, complete data has been obtained on 9 participants. Participants completed self-administered physical activity questionnaires, as well as measures for fatigue and QOL at baseline and 4 months post intervention. Two visits, baseline and post intervention, were required for health and fitness testing. Testing included cardiopulmonary exercise testing, muscle strength, functional movement assessment, and DEXA scans for body composition. Motivational interviewing (MI) was utilized at baseline to determine goals, exercise self-efficacy and to explore facilitators and barriers to exercise. Participants completed weekly exercise logs and received a weekly phone call based on MI techniques. Wilcoxon Signed Rank tests were used to detect significant changes in physical activity, as well as changes in fitness parameters, fatigue and QOL.

Results: The mean age of the 9 participants was 51 years. Body mass index at baseline ranged from 25.3-39.3 with a mean of 30.5. At baseline the mean minutes of total physical activity per week was 36.88 (SD = 46.59). There was a significant increase in minutes of total physical activity a week post intervention (M = 169, SD = 111.6; p = 0.008). Significant improvements were found in cardiopulmonary fitness as measured by VO2peak with a mean increase of 2.36 ml/kg/min (p = 0.004). Muscle strength increased, with significant findings for left arm extension (p = 0.004), right arm flexion (p = 0.03), left leg extension (p = 0.008), right leg extension (p = 0.004) and flexion (p = 0.03). There were no significant differences in percentage of body fat or lean muscle mass on DEXA scan. While both QOL and fatigue scores increased, indicating improvement, neither were significant.

Conclusions: Most women increased their physical activity to at least 150 minutes/week, which is the minimum recommended level of weekly moderate physical activity for cancer survivors to help improve health and prevent other illnesses. Preliminary analyses indicate that the intervention was effective at increasing physical activity and as a result improvements were found on several physiologic health measures.

Note: This abstract was withdrawn after the Program and Proceedings were printed and was not presented at the conference.

Citation Format: Denise Spector, Allison M. Deal, Hojin Yang, Claudio Battaglini. A home-based motivational exercise intervention for African American breast cancer survivors: A pilot study. [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the Fifth AACR Conference on the Science of Cancer Health Disparities in Racial/Ethnic Minorities and the Medically Underserved; 2012 Oct 27-30; San Diego, CA. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev 2012;21(10 Suppl):Abstract nr B47.