Cancer-related fatigue (CRF) is a common and burdensome, often long-term side effect of cancer and its treatment. Many non-pharmacological treatments have been investigated as possible CRF therapies, including exercise, nutrition, health/psychoeducation, and mind-body therapies. However, studies directly comparing the efficacy of these treatments in randomized controlled trials are lacking.
To fill this gap, scientists at Brown University conducted a parallel single blind randomized controlled pilot efficacy trial with women with CRF to directly compare the effects of Qigong (11 women in this group) to an intervention that combined strength and aerobic exercise, plant-based nutrition and health/psychoeducation (13 women in this group) in a per protocol analysis. This design was chosen to determine the comparative efficacy of 2 non-pharmacologic interventions, with different physical demand intensities, in reducing the primary outcome measure of self-reported fatigue (FACIT “Additional Concerns” subscale).
Both interventions showed a mean fatigue improvement of more than double the pre-established minimal clinically important difference and revealed a significant main effect of time, such that both groups significantly improved fatigue from pre- to post-treatment. There was no significant difference between fatigue improvement between groups, suggesting a potential equivalence or non-inferiority of interventions, which we could not definitively establish due to our small sample size.
This study, recently reported by the journal Integrative cancer therapies, provides evidence from a small sample of 24 women with CRF that Qigong improves fatigue similarly to exercise-nutrition courses. Qigong additionally significantly improved secondary measures of mood, emotion regulation, and stress, while exercise/nutrition significantly improved secondary measures of sleep/fatigue. These findings provide preliminary evidence for divergent mechanisms of fatigue improvement across interventions, with Qigong providing a gentler and lower-intensity alternative to exercise/nutrition.
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