Breast Cancer Chemotherapy Reduce the Memory

Memory problems and other disorders often accompanies chemotherapy treatment for breast cancer. There is controversy about the causes of decline in memory, whether the disease itself, drug hormonal blockade or chemotherapy that causes memory decline.

Results showed that brain regions involved in planning, attention and memory performance decreased in patients with breast cancer who had undergone chemotherapy than in patients with breast cancer who did not undergo chemotherapy.

The results of these studies have been published in the Archives of Neurology issue in November 2011. "The results of such research is important to find ways to manage side effects of chemotherapy," researchers said as quoted by Shelli Kesler MSNHealth, Tuesday (15/11/2011).

But according to Michelle Janelsins of James P Wilmot Cancer Center at the University of Rochester Medical Center, Rochester, New York, many women complain about the problem. But when it conducted the test, then the results are included in the normal range on tests of subjective.

"It will provide more information about what actually happened so it can develop a better management approach," explained Janelsins.

Chemo brain is a neurological and cognitive problems most frequently reported in patients with breast cancer who had received chemotherapy. Much research has been devoted to chemo brain, but have not found a way to alleviate the condition.

The researchers compared the results of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) conducted on 25 women with breast cancer who had received chemotherapy, 19 women with breast cancer who did not undergo chemotherapy, and 18 healthy women.

"The women are doing a card sorting task designed to measure problem-solving skills and also reported their own perceptions of their cognitive abilities. Women with breast cancer, both of which have undergone chemotherapy or who have not, showed reduced activity in two regions of the prefrontal cortex. One of the areas of the prefrontal cortex is involved in memory, "the researchers said.

The group that did not undergo chemotherapy did show some changes in the brain, but the actual performance of cognitive tasks is not impaired. Group who had undergone chemotherapy also had reduced activity in the prefrontal cortex and tend to repeat errors and accomplish tasks more slowly than the other two groups. The worse the disease, the lower the activity in the prefrontal cortex.

There are several hypotheses about why chemotherapy can cause problems. One is that the chemotherapy is toxic to neural stem cells.

Moreover, that chemotherapy increases the amount of inflammation in the body, which then enters the brain, and chemotherapy also causes DNA damage. Hormone therapy can also affect cognitive function. Individual variations in estrogen levels may have influenced the study results.

Although the results of these studies showed a relationship between brain function and chemotherapy, but it did not prove a causal relationship.