Journal
PSYCHO-ONCOLOGY
Volume 22, Issue 7, Pages 1517-1527Publisher
WILEY
DOI: 10.1002/pon.3163
Keywords
breast cancer; oncology; neuropsychological testing; chemotherapy; dose-response relationship; cognitive changes
Ask authors/readers for more resources
Objective: The purpose of this study was to determine if cognition progressively worsens with cumulative chemotherapy exposure. We reasoned that the demonstration of such a dose-response' relationship would help to establish whether cognitive changes are caused by neurotoxic effects of chemotherapy or whether they are due to other confounding factors such as mood and pre-treatment differences in cognition. Methods: Sixty women with early stage breast cancer, aged 65years or younger with no previous history of cancer or chemotherapy, were matched to 60 healthy women on age and education. Neuropsychological assessment was conducted after surgery but prior to commencing chemotherapy and then again following each chemotherapy cycle in patients and at yoked intervals in healthy controls. We used multilevel modeling to assess change over time in an overall cognitive summary score as well as domain-specific cognitive scores. Results: After controlling for baseline performance, age, education, and mood, the chemotherapy group showed a significant progressive decline over time relative to a matched healthy control group in an overall cognitive summary score, as well as in working memory, processing speed, verbal memory, and visual memory scores. A linear model best fit the trajectory of cognitive change over the course of treatment in the chemotherapy group supporting a dose-response hypothesis. Conclusions: These results are in keeping with a dose-response relationship and provide the most compelling clinical evidence to date that cognitive decline is caused by chemotherapy exposure. Copyright (c) 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available