RNS: Chemo Brain, July 2008
TIME: 3:23
URL: http://www2.med.umich.edu/prmc/media/newsroom/details.cfm?ID=373
U-M Health Minute: Today’s top health issues and medical research
Coping with ‘chemo brain’
U-M study to look at effects of chemotherapy on brain function of breast cancer survivors
Suggested lead: Many women who undergo chemotherapy for breast cancer describe unsettling changes to the memory and concentration. Researchers at the University of Michigan Comprehensive Cancer Center say this phenomenon is very real, and have even given it a name: Chemo brain. Here’s Andi McDonnell with more.
While Maria Lyzen was being treated for breast cancer, she found she couldn’t concentrate or decipher information. And just functioning day-to-day at home was difficult. She tells us…
“When I started to feel funny in my head, I really didn’t know what it was. I didn’t know if it was a reaction to the trauma, being told that I had breast cancer. I really didn’t know, it was in my late 50s, was it the beginning of an aging symptom or was it the drugs that I was getting in terms of my chemotherapy?”
Researchers are only beginning to understand what Lyzen and others experience during cancer treatment. Patients often call this phenomenon “chemo brain.” Now, researchers are beginning to study this phenomenon and all the possible factors that contribute to it.
Dr. Bernadine Cimprich (Ph.D., R.N.), an associate professor of nursing at the U-M School of Nursing and a researcher at the U-M Comprehensive Cancer Center, explains…
“Women have complained of cognitive changes that have occurred during the time that they’ve been treated for breast cancer for a long time now, and chemotherapy is one of the possible sources of these kinds of cognitive changes. But actually, there are other possible reasons that a woman might experience cognitive problems.”
Cimprich has begun a new study to look at problems of attention and working memory, including what causes these cognitive impairments, what effect chemotherapy has on these brain functions and how much other influences may play a role. She tells us…
“Our ultimate goal and hope for this research is that it will give us information that will be a kind of basis or foundation for designing care or interventions that we can help women from the very beginning of their treatment, help them to maintain their cognitive function, and to even conserve cognitive effort so that they can maintain optimal functioning over the course of their breast cancer treatment and beyond..”
The researchers will use functional magnetic resonance imaging, which can test brain function while a person performs a mental task. Breast cancer patients receiving chemotherapy will be compared with patients not receiving chemotherapy and with healthy women who do not have breast cancer.
Lyzen says she regained much of her concentration since having completed breast cancer treatment two years ago. But, while concentration is much more difficult for her now, she’s happy to know that researchers are taking the chemo brain phenomenon seriously.
“Whether people are having troubles because they’re just having a traumatic response or whether it’s ‘chemo brain’ or whether it is because they are aging, it doesn’t really matter. What matters is that they are getting the support and the acknowledgement that they are being heard and that is very important not to be dismissed.”
For more information about breast cancer treatment or the chemo brain study, call the Cancer AnswerLine at 800-865-1125.
Andi McDonnell, U-M Health System News.
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