Cachexia is a condition of severe body weight loss due to striated muscle wasting associated with chronic diseases, including cancer. Cachexia directly accounts for 20% of cancer patient deaths, and therefore its occurrence is a poor prognosis factor. However, the actual mechanisms responsible for cachectic patient mortality have still not been clearly established. Both skeletal and cardiac muscle wasting occur in cancer cachexia. We and others have shown that exercise counteracts skeletal muscle wasting and increases survival in both animal models and cancer patients. We aim to extend our studies to the other striated muscle (i.e., cardiac muscle) in order to establish a correlation between atrophy of the heart and mortality risk; we also aim to demonstrate if endurance exercise rescues heart homeostasis and function in a murine model of cancer cachexia (C26 colon carcinoma-bearing mice). To this purpose, we will perform a metanalysis on clinical studies to demonstrate the association between the occurrence of cachexia, mortality and the underlying presence of cardiovascular disease states. In the murine model, we will compare the heart composition and function in C26-bearing mice which display or not cachexia; besides, we will study exercise effects on the heart, to see whether aerobic training ameliorates heart condition in the presence of a tumor. The expected results will show: whether cachexia is a reliable indicator of poor patient prognosis due to heart wasting, the need for prevention of cardiovascular diseases as a comorbidity in cachexia, and if exercise exerts beneficial effects on the heart increasing survival.
