Catch wasting early with a smart scale and a step counter
Slow weight loss and falling daily activity are the first signs of cancer wasting, and both can be measured at home. An alert could bring help months earlier.
Home weight and activity monitoring is cheap and acceptable, and remote symptom monitoring has already improved survival and quality of life in randomised oncology trials. Trajectory-based alerts on weight and step count would detect functional decline weeks to months before clinic visits, at which point nutrition and exercise interventions still work.
- Cachexia, toxicity and the limits of the patient · Patients often die of wasting or cannot tolerate the doses that would work. Treating the patient, not just the tumour, lags far behind.
- Patients lack understanding, navigation and agency · Most patients cannot understand their options, find trials, or push back, so decisions are made for them.
- Toxicity and quality of life are undervalued · Trials measure how long people live, not how they live. Side-effects are under-reported and under-treated.
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not linked directly; found by shared links- IdeaQualify a physical function endpoint so anti-wasting drugs can be approved
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- InstitutionEuropean Society for Clinical Nutrition and Metabolism
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- InstitutionWilmot Cancer Institute, University of Rochester
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