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Science Forum Index » Medicine - Cancer Forum » Chemotherapy causes brain shrinkage, study finds
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| E.Nigma |
 Posted: Thu Nov 30, 2006 8:20 pm |
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by Jessica Fraser
http://www.newstarget.com/021200.html
(NewsTarget) Breast cancer patients who are treated with both surgery
and chemotherapy may suffer from brain shrinkage that can affect
memory and cognition, according to a new Japanese study appearing in
the Jan. 1 issue of the journal Cancer.
Women who undergo adjuvant chemotherapy -- chemo used in conjunction
with another treatment; usually surgery -- to treat breast cancer
often experience a phenomenon called "chemobrain" during treatment.
Patients who experience "chemobrain" complain of memory and cognition
problems.
A team of researchers led by Dr. Masatoshi Inagaki of the National
Cancer Center Hospital East examined high-resolution MRI brain scans
of breast cancer survivors treated with adjuvant chemotherapy taken
one year after the patients' surgery. The researchers compared those
scans to brain scans of adjuvant chemo patients taken three years
after surgery, and to scans of healthy control patients.
The researchers found that the patients whose scans had been taken a
year after surgery had smaller gray and white brain matter in areas
of the brain that are involved in cognition and memory -- the
prefrontal, parahippocampal, cingulated gyrus and precuneus regions
- -- compared to the control patients who had never undergone
chemotherapy.
However, Inagaki found that the brain shrinkage seems to be
reversible, since there was no difference in brain matter size
between patients whose scans were taken three years after surgery and
control patients.
"Results lead to the idea that adjuvant chemotherapy could have a
temporary effect on brain structure," the researchers wrote. "These
findings can provide new insights for future research to improve the
quality of life of cancer patients who receive adjuvant
chemotherapy."
The researchers did not study the effects of different chemotherapy
agents on the brain because interactions between chemo drugs would
have made definitive conclusions difficult. However, Inagaki and
colleagues wrote that "these results indicate a potential effect of
adjuvant chemotherapy on brain structure, and the change of the brain
structure may be associated with memory function."
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E.
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