A landmark study presented at the ASCO 2025 conference and published in the New England Journal of Medicine has demonstrated that a structured exercise programme can significantly improve survival rates among colon cancer patients post-treatment.
The CHALLENGE trial, involving 889 patients, showed that participants who engaged in regular aerobic exercise had better disease-free survival rates than those who received health education alone.
According to Dr Samuel Hume, this is amazing: the first large, randomised trial to show that exercise improves survival after cancer.
The benefit from the exercise program was like adding another cancer drug, without the side effects.
The new study in a randomised trial of 889 colon cancer patients found that people in the intervention group had:
- “significantly longer disease-free survival”
- a 7%-point increase in overall survival after 8 years
- a dramatic reduction in new primary cancers
In a well-done randomised trial, a structured exercise programme decreased the risk of colon cancer reoccurring, and patients lived longer.
Structured Exercise after Adjuvant Chemotherapy for Colon Cancer | New England Journal of Medicine
