| Apr 16, 2007 @ 10:50 AM |
A health note
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Antoinette8
Posts: 431
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Chemo Has Long-Term Impact on Brain Function
Chemotherapy causes changes in the brain's metabolism and blood flow that
can last as long as 10 years, a discovery that may explain the mental fog and
confusion that affect many cancer survivors, researchers said on Thursday.
The researchers, from the University of California, Los Angeles, found that
women who had undergone chemotherapy five to 10 years earlier had lower
metabolism in a key region of the frontal cortex.
Women treated with chemotherapy also showed a spike in blood flow to the
frontal cortex and cerebellum while performing memory tests, indicating a rapid
jump in activity level, the researchers said in a statement about their study.
"The same area of the frontal lobe that showed lower resting metabolism
displayed a substantial leap in activity when the patients were performing the
memory exercise," said Daniel Silverman, the UCLA associate professor
who led the study.
"In effect, these women's brains were working harder than the control subjects'
to recall the same information," he said in a statement.
Experts estimate at least 25 percent of chemotherapy patients are affected
by symptoms of confusion, so-called chemo brain, and a recent study by the
University of Minnesota reported an 82 percent rate, the statement said.
"People with 'chemo brain' often can't focus, remember things or multitask
the way they did before chemotherapy," Silverman said. "Our study demonstrates
for the first time that patients suffering from these cognitive symptoms have
specific alterations in brain metabolism."
The study, published on Thursday in the online edition of Breast Cancer Research
and Treatment, tested 21 women who had surgery to remove breast tumors, 16
of whom had received chemotherapy and five who had not.
The researchers used positron emission tomography scans to compare the brain
function of the women. They also compared the scans with those of 13 women
who had not had breast cancer or chemotherapy.
Positron emission tomography creates an image of sections of the body using
a special camera that follows the progress of an injected radioactive tracer.
Researchers used the scans to examine the women's resting brain metabolism as
well as the blood flow to their brains as they did a short-term memory exercise.
Silverman said the findings suggested PET scans could be used to monitor
the effects of chemotherapy on brain metabolism. Since the scans already are
used to monitor patients for tumor response to therapy, the additional tests
would be easy to add, he said.
Breast cancer is the most common cancer among women, with some 211,000
new cases diagnosed each year, the statement said.
- Reuters
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