New research from the Exercise Medicine Research Institute at Edith Cowan University (ECU) has highlighted that children undergoing cancer treatment often lose skeletal muscle at a time when they should be rapidly gaining it, a loss that could increase treatment complications and raise the risk of long-term health problems.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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Both the cancer itself and the cancer treatment can cause muscle loss in children.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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Muscle is the body’s metabolic reserve. When children lose muscle during treatment, they tolerate chemotherapy less well and face a higher risk of complications from drug toxicity.”\u00a0<\/p>\n
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Anna Maria Markarian,\u00a0ECU PhD student\u00a0<\/p>\n
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Losing muscle also makes children and adolescents more vulnerable to heart and metabolic problems such as high blood sugar and insulin resistance, Ms Markarian said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“For example, during the onset of puberty children gain 3 kg to 5 kg of muscle per year. If treatment interrupts this growth and it isn’t recovered afterwards, it can severely impact health outcomes in the longer term.”\u00a0<\/p>\n
The research also found that children undergoing cancer treatment are likely to experience increases in fat mass, which can further contribute to metabolic problems and increase the risk of heart-related issues.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“Weight is not the whole story. Two kids can weigh the same, one with healthy muscle, one with excess fat, and their ability to tolerate chemotherapy could be very different.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“The challenge here is differentiating between muscle loss and fat gain, as this could have important clinical implications. Shifts in body composition can create a mismatch between dosing assumptions and actual metabolic capacity, heightening the risk of treatment-related complications and poorer clinical outcomes in patients with diminished skeletal muscle mass,” Ms Markarian said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The message for parents is simple: keep kids moving. Encourage age-appropriate active play and exercise, despite the obvious difficulties that would be associated with that.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Source:<\/p>\n
Journal reference:<\/p>\n
Markarian, A. M., et al. (2025). Longitudinal changes in skeletal muscle in children undergoing cancer treatment: a systematic review and meta-analysis.\u00a0European Journal of Pediatrics. doi.org\/10.1007\/s00431-025-06349-5<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"New research from the Exercise Medicine Research Institute at Edith Cowan University (ECU) has highlighted that children undergoing…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":7139,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[78],"tags":[110,23669,4144,3914,18,539,135,137,19,17,96,3294,172],"class_list":{"0":"post-55499","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-health","8":"tag-cancer","9":"tag-cancer-treatment","10":"tag-chemotherapy","11":"tag-children","12":"tag-eire","13":"tag-exercise","14":"tag-health","15":"tag-heart","16":"tag-ie","17":"tag-ireland","18":"tag-medicine","19":"tag-muscle","20":"tag-research"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55499","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=55499"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55499\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7139"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=55499"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=55499"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=55499"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}