Overview
- Newcastle University tested 30 overweight or obese but otherwise healthy men who completed a 10–12 minute intense cycling bout with blood drawn before and immediately after exercise.
- Post-exercise blood showed higher concentrations of 13 proteins associated with reduced inflammation, improved blood vessel function, and metabolism, including a protein linked to DNA repair.
- Applying the post-exercise serum to colorectal cancer cells in vitro altered the activity of 1,364 genes spanning DNA repair, energy production, and growth pathways.
- Findings published in the International Journal of Cancer provide a potential mechanistic explanation for exercise’s protective effects and point to prospects for therapies that mimic exercise-induced signals, according to the authors.
- Researchers stress the results are preliminary given the small, healthy male cohort and lab-based assays, and they plan studies on repeated exercise, patient populations, and interactions with treatments; bowel cancer is the UK’s fourth most common cancer with about 44,000 cases a year.