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Using ecological momentary assessment to understand associations between daily physical activity and symptoms in breast cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy

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Abstract

Purpose

Understanding real-time relationships between physical activity (PA) and symptoms during chemotherapy (CT) could have important implications for intervention. This study used ecological momentary assessment to examine the relationship between objective PA and symptoms during CT.

Methods

Breast cancers patients (n = 67; Mage = 48.6 (SD = 10.3)) participated in data collection at three time points during CT: beginning, middle, and end. At each time point, participants answered four prompts assessing symptoms and wore an accelerometer for 10 days (3 days pre-CT, day of CT, and 6 days post-CT). Multilevel linear regression models examined the between- and within-person associations between moderate to vigorous (MVPA) and light-intensity physical activity (LPA) and same and next-day symptom ratings controlling for covariates.

Results

On days when individuals engaged in more LPA or MVPA, separately, they reported improved affect, anxiety, fatigue, physical functioning (walking and activities of daily living), pain, and cognition that day (p < 0.001 for all). Findings were consistent for next-day symptom ratings with the exception that only previous day LPA was related to next-day fatigue and neither LPA nor MVPA were related to next-day cognition (p < 0.001 for all). No between-person effects were found.

Conclusions

Within person higher than usual PA on a given day, regardless of intensity, is associated with improved symptoms ratings on the current and next day.

Implications for cancer survivors

Encouraging breast cancer patients undergoing CT to engage in daily PA could help manage CT-associated symptoms.

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Data Availability

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon request.

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Funding

This work was supported by the Lynn Sage Cancer Research Foundation and the National Cancer Institute (K07CA196840).

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Preventive Medicine, Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, 680 N. Lake Shore Drive, Chicago, IL, 60611, USA

    Madelyn Whitaker, Whitney A. Welch, Lisa A. Auster-Gussman, Payton Solk, Juned Siddique & Siobhan M. Phillips

  2. Department of Health and Exercise Sciences, Wake Forest University, Winston-Salem, NC, USA

    Jason Fanning

  3. Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center, John Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, USA

    Cesar A. Santa-Maria

  4. Department of Medicine, Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, Chicago, IL, USA

    Seema A. Khan, Swati A. Kulkarni & William Gradishar

Authors
  1. Madelyn Whitaker
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  2. Whitney A. Welch
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  3. Jason Fanning
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  4. Cesar A. Santa-Maria
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  5. Lisa A. Auster-Gussman
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  6. Payton Solk
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  7. Seema A. Khan
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  8. Swati A. Kulkarni
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  10. Juned Siddique
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  11. Siobhan M. Phillips
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Contributions

Siobhan Phillips, Jason Fanning, Cesar Santa Maria, Seema Ahsan Khan, and Swati Kulkarni contributed to the study conception and design. Material preparation, data collection, and analysis were performed by Madelyn Whitaker, Payton Solk, Juned Siddique, and Siobhan Phillips. The first draft of the manuscript was written by Madelyn Whitaker and all authors commented on the following versions of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Siobhan M. Phillips.

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Ethics approval

The institutional review board at Northwestern University approved all study procedures.

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All participants signed an online informed consent.

Competing interests

The authors declare no competing interests.

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Whitaker, M., Welch, W.A., Fanning, J. et al. Using ecological momentary assessment to understand associations between daily physical activity and symptoms in breast cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy. Support Care Cancer 30, 6613–6622 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00520-022-07071-w

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00520-022-07071-w

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