In recent study researchers warned that chemotherapy could cause brain damage in breast cancer patients. In revolutionary study researchers from Stanford University found that breast cancer patients who had undergone the treatment, which uses drugs to destroy tumourous cells, had considerably fewer activities in the brain regions, responsible for memory and planning.
They believe that the study findings could explicate the phenomenon chemo brain, it is a term used to illustrate smoggy thinking and memory lapses subsequent to sessions of chemotherapy. A team led by Shelli Kesler carried out a study involving twenty-five breast cancer patients those had been treated with chemotherapy, nineteen breast cancer patients who had surgery and other treatment and eighteen healthy women.
Each study participant was asked to complete a card-sorting task, involving problem-solving skills, in which their brain activity was monitored with the help of fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging). They were also asked to complete a questionnaire evaluating their cognitive abilities. Researchers found that patients treated with chemotherapy made more errors.
In addition to that their scans showed diminished activity in the regions of the brain responsible for cognitive control, functioning memory and planning. According Kesler, this shows that when a patient reports struggling with these types of problems, then there is a good chance there has been a brain change. The study was published in the Archives of Neurology.
The cancer patients have long complained of neurological side effects like short-range memory loss and in severe cases, vision loss and even dementia subsequent to chemotherapy. Their next step is to begin investigating which patients are more susceptible to this sort of shortfall occurred due to chemotherapy which is governed in the form of tablet, an injection or infusion directly into a vein.
In previous study in 2008 by the University of Rochester Medical Center (URMC) and Harvard Medical School linked the extensively used chemotherapy drug 5-fluorouracil (5-FU) to the weakening of healthy brain cells. It is apparent that, in some patients, chemotherapy seems to trigger a degenerative condition in the central nervous system, explained study author Mark Noble.