Fatigue harms cancer patients' quality of life

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Among women diagnosed with breast cancer, fatigue is the symptom most strongly associated with a worse overall quality of life, German researchers report.

The influence of fatigue "by far" exceeded that of symptoms such as pain, nausea, and sleeping problems, Dr. Volker Arndt of the German Cancer Research Center in Heidelberg and colleagues found.

While cancer patients' symptoms are understood to have an impact on their quality of life, few researchers have attempted to separate out the individual effects of each symptom, they note in the journal Cancer.

To investigate, Arndt and colleagues surveyed 314 women one year after they were diagnosed with breast cancer, using a questionnaire that gauged both quality of life and levels of symptoms.

The most common symptoms the women reported were fatigue, sleeping problems, pain, and symptoms involving the arms, the researchers found.

Fatigue was the most important factor determining a woman's overall quality of life, the researchers found, accounting for 30 percent to 50 percent of variability in quality of life scores.

Little is known about the causes of fatigue in cancer patients, and there is a "profound communication gap" between doctors and patients regarding cancer-related fatigue, Arndt and colleagues write.

Suggested treatments include "mild physical exercise, sleep hygiene and attention-restoring activities," they add, and while therapy with stimulant drugs, transfusion of red blood cells, or treatment with red blood cell-boosting erythropoietin have all been suggested as well, there is little evidence on their effectiveness.

"These findings suggest that efforts to reduce specifically the burden of fatigue may be very promising approaches to enhance quality of life in breast cancer survivors," Arndt and colleagues conclude.

SOURCE: Cancer, November 15, 2006.