Can Exercise Adaptations Be Maintained in Men with Prostate Cancer Following Supervised Programmes? Implications to the COVID-19 Landscape of Urology and Clinical Exercise

Pedro Lopez; Dennis R Taaffe; Robert U Newton; Nigel Spry; Tom Shannon; Mark Frydenberg; Fred Saad; Daniel A Galvão

doi:10.1016/j.euros.2020.09.002

Can Exercise Adaptations Be Maintained in Men with Prostate Cancer Following Supervised Programmes? Implications to the COVID-19 Landscape of Urology and Clinical Exercise

Eur Urol Open Sci. 2020 Oct:21:47-50. doi: 10.1016/j.euros.2020.09.002. Epub 2020 Oct 2.

Authors

Pedro Lopez^{1

2}, Dennis R Taaffe^{1

2}, Robert U Newton^{1

2

3}, Nigel Spry^{1

2

4}, Tom Shannon⁵, Mark Frydenberg⁶, Fred Saad⁷, Daniel A Galvão^{1

2}

Affiliations

¹ Exercise Medicine Research Institute, Edith Cowan University, Perth, Western Australia, Australia.
² School of Medical and Health Sciences, Edith Cowan University, Perth, Western Australia, Australia.
³ School of Human Movement and Nutrition Sciences, University of Queensland, St. Lucia, Queensland, Australia.
⁴ Faculty of Medicine, University of Western Australia, Nedlands, Western Australia, Australia.
⁵ The Prostate Clinic, Hollywood Private Hospital, Nedlands, Western Australia, Australia.
⁶ Department of Surgery, Faculty of Medicine, Nursing and Health Sciences, Monash University, Clayton, Victoria, Australia.
⁷ Division of Urology and Urologic Oncology, Centre Hospitalier de l'Université de Montréal, Montreal, Quebec, Canada.

Abstract

In this brief correspondence, we evaluate the potential impact of pivoting from face-to-face supervised to unsupervised home-based exercise programmes to contextualise the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic in prostate cancer patients. A meta-analysis was undertaken in fatigue, quality of life, and lean and fat mass outcomes in the four studies included. Our analysis indicates that unsupervised home-based exercise maintains patient-reported outcomes, except for fat mass. In summary, changing to unsupervised exercise is unlikely to provide further benefits on patient-reported and body composition outcomes, but may help maintain initial gains during physical distancing restrictions.

Patient summary: We discuss the potential impacts of transitioning from face-to-face supervised to unsupervised home-based exercise programmes in prostate cancer patients during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. Our analysis suggests that patients are likely to maintain patient-reported and body composition benefits from current nonsupervised programmes; however, evolution of exercise delivery to prostate cancer patients is required to continue health and fitness improvement in this group.

Keywords: Body composition; COVID-19; Exercise; Patient-reported outcomes; Prostate cancer.