Breast cancer survivors often experience chronic psychological and physiological stress after completing treatment. Prolonged stress can dysregulate the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis, leading to elevated levels of cortisol and inflammatory cytokines like interleukin-6 (IL-6), which have been linked to poorer health outcomes (e.g., fatigue, depression, and even cancer progression). Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) is a meditation-based program shown to alleviate stress, anxiety, fatigue, and other symptoms in cancer survivors . However, prior to this study it was unclear whether MBSR produces measurable changes in objective stress biomarkers such as salivary cortisol and IL-6. Lengacher et al. (2019) address this gap by investigating the effects of a tailored MBSR program for breast cancer survivors on these biomarkers in a large randomized controlled trial (RCT). The authors also examined how changes in cortisol and IL-6 relate to patients’ symptoms and quality of life
Participants were recruited from the Moffitt Cancer Center and the Morsani clinics at the University of South Florida, located in Tampa, FL. Participation selection criteria was: (1) female sex; (2) age >= 21 years; (3) a diagnosis of Stage 0, I, II, or III BC; (4) treatment with a lumpectomy and/or mastectomy; (5) completion of adjuvant radiation and/or chemotherapy at least 2 weeks prior to enrollment and within 2 years from end of primary treatment; and (6) the ability to read and speak English at an eighth-grade level. Exclusion criteria included: (1) diagnosis of Stage IV cancer, (2) a severe current psychiatric diagnosis, and (3) a cancer recurrence.