Although childhood cancer prognosis has improved significantly in recent years, treatments have long-term side effects. The VIE project, which aims to improve the quality of life of childhood cancer survivors through healthy lifestyle choices, will be expanded to all pediatric oncology centres in Quebec starting this fall.
More than 80% of children and young people with cancer hope for a cure, but of those who survive, two-thirds will suffer later from the effects of their treatment.
This kind of fairly aggressive treatment can last for two years, for example, in patients with leukemia, the most common form of childhood cancer.
While developing, adolescents may later develop neurocognitive, endocrine, and cardiometabolic complications, such as hypertension and prediabetes.
“We're not the first to discover this, but we're the first to find that it's happening at a very young age. These people are being treated for cancer as children, so they're at higher risk for various health complications later in life,” explained Valérie Marcil, professor at the University of Montreal and founder of the VIE project.
Cancer treatments can cause taste changes and nutritional deficiencies, and medications can cause significant weight gain.
“Lifestyle habits are not magic,” Marcil said, noting that the side effects can be serious and that maintaining good habits can be difficult during difficult times in life.
“These are very powerful drugs, so eating an apple certainly isn't going to solve the problem,” acknowledges the researcher, who works with families through therapy and cooking workshops to encourage balanced diets and restore the pleasure of eating.
Marcil is convinced that interventions focusing on healthy lifestyle habits can have long-term benefits on cardiometabolic health, and he hopes to demonstrate this in future studies.
Teenager Programs
The VIE project was implemented at CHU Sainte-Justine in Montreal. Since its inception in 2018, the project has helped many families overcome the challenges associated with a cancer diagnosis, during and after treatment.
The program has three components: nutrition, physical activity and psychosocial. At CHU Sainte-Justine, a multidisciplinary team of oncologists, physiotherapists, exercise physiologists, nutritionists, occupational therapists and social workers works together.
The psychosocial component focuses on problem-solving therapy, which is administered at a time when children and parents feel like they are losing control, Marcil says.
In terms of physical activity, the goal is to support patients who are not necessarily in a severe condition.
“The 'easy' cancers are often overlooked,” Marcil says, “Younger people who have surgery or amputations are treated, but those who are recovering well are often forgotten, but are still at risk of developing complications in the long term.”
The VIE project is currently being developed in collaboration with other centres, allowing each centre to adapt the programme to their own particular characteristics.
It will be available this year at the University of Quebec in Laval, University of Sherbrooke and Montreal Children's Hospital.
For now, families will be followed for a year, but Marcil would like to follow them regularly over a longer period of time.
A similar project is also being developed for young people at the University of Sainte-Justine.
Marcil explained that teenagers have little interest in family involvement.
“Not only are they less responsive to family-directed interventions, but they are also more susceptible than those who were treated at a younger age, and being treated as a teenager has even more of an impact on their cardiometabolic health,” Marcil said.
The youth project was launched in cooperation with former participants of the VIE project.
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–This report by La Presse Canadienne was translated by CityNews
