‘Chemo Brain’: MRI Shows Brain Changes After Chemother­apy (Medscape):

- “Breast can­cer sur­vivors who have been treated with chemother­apy show sig­nif­i­cant changes in brain activ­ity, mea­sured by func­tional mag­netic res­o­nance imag­ing (fMRI), accord­ing to a study pub­lished in the Novem­ber issue of the Archives of Neu­rol­ogy.”

- “The find­ing val­i­dates patients’ claims of reduced cog­ni­tive func­tion after receiv­ing chemother­apy, a phe­nom­e­non referred to as “chemo brain,” said lead author Shelli R. Kesler, PhD, from Stan­ford Uni­ver­sity School of Med­i­cine in California.”

Link to study Pre­frontal Cor­tex and Exec­u­tive Func­tion Impair­ments in Pri­mary Breast Can­cer (Archives of Neurology):

• Objec­tives To exam­ine dif­fer­ences in prefrontal-executive func­tion between breast can­cer (BC) sur­vivors with and with­out a his­tory of chemother­apy treat­ment com­pared with healthy con­trol women and to deter­mine the asso­ci­a­tions between pre­frontal cor­tex deficits and behav­ioral impair­ments, as well as cer­tain demo­graphic and dis­ease variables.
• Design Obser­va­tional study.
• Set­ting University-based research facility.
• Par­tic­i­pants Twenty-five women with BC who had received chemother­apy, 19 women with BC who had not received chemother­apy, and 18 healthy female con­trols, all matched for age and other demo­graphic variables.
• Results Women with BC demon­strated sig­nif­i­cantly reduced acti­va­tion in the left mid­dle dor­so­lat­eral pre­frontal cor­tex and pre­mo­tor cor­tex com­pared with healthy con­trols. The chemother­apy group also demon­strated sig­nif­i­cantly reduced left cau­dal lat­eral pre­frontal cor­tex acti­va­tion and increased per­se­ver­a­tive errors and reduced pro­cess­ing speed com­pared with the other 2 groups. Reduced left cau­dal lat­eral pre­frontal cor­tex acti­va­tion was sig­nif­i­cantly cor­re­lated with higher dis­ease sever­ity and ele­vated sub­jec­tive exec­u­tive dys­func­tion in the chemotherapy-treated women. Older age and lower edu­ca­tional level were asso­ci­ated with increased exec­u­tive func­tion impair­ment in the chemother­apy group.
• Con­clu­sions These find­ings pro­vide fur­ther evi­dence of neu­ro­log­i­cal impair­ment asso­ci­ated with pri­mary BC irre­spec­tive of treat­ment his­tory. The left cau­dal lat­eral pre­frontal region may be par­tic­u­larly vul­ner­a­ble to the effects of chemother­apy and/or dis­ease sever­ity and may rep­re­sent a novel bio­marker of sub­jec­tive exec­u­tive dys­func­tion in chemotherapy-treated women. Fur­ther­more, neg­a­tive effects of chemother­apy on brain func­tion may be exac­er­bated by such fac­tors as increased age and lower edu­ca­tional level.

To learn more, see related arti­cles on Chemo Brain.

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