E-Mail Los Angeles (April 1, 2021) -- Overweight children and adolescents receiving chemotherapy for treatment of leukemia are less successful battling the disease compared to their lean peers. Now, research conducted at the Cancer and Blood Disease Institute at Children's Hospital Los Angeles indicates that modest changes in diet and exercise can greatly increase survival in youth treated for acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL), the most common childhood cancer. "To our knowledge, this is the first study to show that by limiting calories and increasing exercise we can make chemotherapy more effective in eliminating leukemia cells within the first month of therapy, decreasing the chances of disease relapse in children and adolescents," says Principal Investigator Etan Orgel, MD, MS, Director of the Medical Supportive Care Service in the Cancer and Blood Disease Institute at Children's Hospital Los Angeles. The study is published in the American Society of Hematology's journal