Hi everyone,
I’m Mary Pegington and I’m a research dietitian working on the B-AHEAD 3 study (That’s “Breast - Activity and Healthy Eating After Diagnosis”). The study is run by dietitian Dr Michelle Harvie, and oncologist Dr Sacha Howell. The study has been open since 2015 but we have been struggling to recruit to it and now it is in danger of being closed down.
We’re based in Manchester and most of the women on the study have been recruited at The Christie, but we’re also recruiting in the following areas:
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Exeter
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Leighton
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Liverpool
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Macclesfield
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North Manchester and Oldham
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Plymouth
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Stoke
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Tameside
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Wigan
65 women have joined the study so far and we’ve had some wonderful comments back from them, they have loved having access to physiotherapy and dietitian advice, feel fitter, given them something positive to focus on, and we’re always understanding when things don’t go to plan (life gets in the way!). Ideally we need to recruit 134 women to the study.
There’s good evidence to suggest that building up muscle lost during treatment with exercises that are tailored to your needs may help you to suffer fewer side effects from the treatment, and losing weight may help the treatment to work better.
More info is here: cancerresearchuk.org/about-cancer/find-a-clinical-trial/a-study-looking-at-diet-and-exercise-during-chemotherapy-for-breast-cancer-that-has-spread-b-ahead-3
We fear that if we are unable to recruit to B-AHEAD 3 and it has to close, then it would be incredibly difficult for future researchers to start any new research studies in this area of lifestyle and secondary breast cancer - no-one would fund it as they wouldn’t believe that it will be able to recruit patients successfully.
Please get in touch if you’d like more information about the study or if you think you are eligible. It would really help us if you could spread the word about the study so if you can help us with that, please get in touch via this forum or via Twitter: @marypeg_RD
Thanks so much for reading this.