ET Shows Favorable Physical Health Decline Data vs Chemo in Breast Cancer

A recent study published in JAMA Network Open found that, in patients with breast cancer, those who received treatment with chemotherapy experienced a long-lasting decline in physical health when compared with those who were treated with endocrine therapies. CancerNetwork® interviewed Clara Bodelon, PhD, MS, senior principal scientist of survivor research at the American Cancer Society and lead study author, about the results they uncovered.

Bodelon stated that, though it’s been known that cancer treatments cause physical health declines, they set out to complete this study in hopes of finding out if certain specific types of therapy have more severe or diminished effects.

They found that within 2 years, between 2 and 5 years, and from 5 years on, patients who received chemotherapy had more substantive declines from baseline compared with those who received endocrine therapy or those who were cancer-free.

Transcript:

There have been well-designed studies that have looked at the long-term effects of physical health decline among cancer survivors in general, and breast cancer survivors. One of the things that we have seen is that all cancer survivors, and in particular breast cancer survivors, have a [physical health] decline compared with similar women of the same age. It’s thought that it’s due to the cancer and the cancer treatments, but it has been a general view [held about] the cancer survivors, and we wanted to specifically look at the different treatments that women with breast cancer will receive and see whether we saw the same effects dependent on the treatment that they received.

[In] women who received chemotherapy, what we saw is that they have long-term effects within the first 2 years after a cancer diagnosis, 2 to 5 years [after the diagnosis], and more than 5 years after the cancer diagnosis, and we saw that, compared to cancer-free women of the same age, they have declines in their physical health. However, in the women who received endocrine therapy, we saw that, after the first 2 years, the physical health was similar to that of cancer-free [women] of the same age, suggesting that those who receive endocrine therapy do not have long-lasting effects. At least with the physical health aspects like physical functioning, they may be similar to those who never had cancer to start with.

Reference

Bodelon C, Masters M, Bloodworth DE, et al. Physical health decline after chemotherapy or endocrine therapy in breast cancer survivors. JAMA Netw Open. 2025;8(2):e2462365. doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2024.62365