When I tried to click on the link to get the full text I got an error message, but the abstract is very informative on its own. Basically, the evidence is at the level of high correlation, though not exactly causation, of exercise activating specific immune cells that can suppress breast cancer cell growth.
Exercise, physical activity and breast cancer: the role of tumor-associated macrophages.
Source
Interdisciplinary Program in Nutritional Sciences, University of Washington, Seattle, USA.
Abstract
Regular exercise
and physical activity provide many health benefits and are encouraged
by medical professionals for the primary prevention of and adjuvant
treatment of breast cancer Current consensus in the discipline of exercise oncology is that both regular physical activity and exercise training exert some protective effect against breast cancer risk, and may reduce morbidity in some advanced cases. While there is growing interest in the role of exercise and physical activity in breast cancer prevention, it is currently unclear how exercise
may modulate tumor behavior. The tumor microenvironment is populated by
stromal cells such as fibroblasts and adipocytes, as well as
macrophages. Termed tumor-associated macrophages (TAMs), these immune
cells are highly plastic and respond to different signals from the cancer
microenvironment, causing them to either display tumor-promoting or
tumor-suppressing phenotypes. Because of such plasticity, there has been
considerable interest by immunologists to develop immunotherapies based
on skewing the behavior of TAMs to become cancer-suppressive. Previous studies have indirectly shown the ability of exercise
training to induce an anti-tumor effect of macrophages, although the
studies did not address this in the tumor microenvironment.
Nevertheless, this opens up the possibility that regular exercise training may exert a protective innate immune effect against breast cancer, potentially by inducing a cancer-suppressing phenotype of TAMs. This review will describe potential mechanisms through which exercise may modulate the behavior of TAMs.
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