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MONDAY, Nov. 27 (HealthDay News) -- Chemotherapy promotes a short-term, but apparently reversible, shrinkage of key brain areas, new research shows.
These changes could explain the impairment of thinking, memory, and focus that many cancer patients complain of after treatment, a Japanese research team has found.
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The changes are marked by a temporary dimunition of certain brain areas that help people concentrate, plan, problem-solve, execute, and remember. This shrinkage can bring on a general cognitive malaise often called "chemo-brain."
However, these reductions in brain matter were no longer evident three and four years after chemotherapy, the Japanese team reported Monday in the online edition of Cancer.
"These findings can provide new insights for future research to improve the quality of life of cancer patients," concluded a team led by Dr. Masatoshi Inagaki of the Research Center for Innovative Oncology, part of the National Cancer Center Hospital East in Chiba, Japan.
The current study both supports and contradicts prior research into chemo-brain.
For example, a study released last month by researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles, suggested that chemo-brain is linked to brain blood-flow changes that can endure for a decade or more.
The UCLA findings also suggested that anywhere from 25 percent to 80 percent of breast cancer patients who undergo chemotherapy are subject to chemo-brain. The condition is poorly understood and is often accompanied by a range of other chemo side-effects, such as gastrointestinal disturbances and weakened immunity.
Chemotherapy has greatly improved cancer survival rates in recent years, however.
So, to better understand the treatment's negative implications, the Japanese team analyzed three years of MRI scans from breast cancer survivors who received follow-up care at the Chiba hospital.
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