MSU Study May Help Women Seek Chemotherapy

A new study conducted by Michigan State University (MSU) could encourage more women with breast cancer to pursue chemotherapy treatment.

The study shows that the stress of a breast cancer diagnosis, rather than the chemotherapy itself, causes problematic memory and concentration problems in breast cancer patients.

“Just knowing that the cognitive effects need not be so developed could help in terms of their decision,” says Michael Boivin, with MSU’s Neurology and Ophthalmology department.

In his research, Boivin compared three groups of women. The first group included 44 women with breast cancer who hadn’t received chemotherapy or radiation. The second included 30 women who had a benign breast biopsy and the third included 20 breast cancer survivors who had completed treatment at least a year before.

Each of the women were tested on their cognitive abilities and evaluated for anxiety, depression, their overall quality of life and the amount of social support they had.

Women who were recently diagnosed and those who had benign biopsies performed the same on a working memory and spatial learning test, but neither group performed as well as the survivors who had undergone treatment.

The study also showed that women with breast cancer had slight problems with attention and learning skills prior to starting chemotherapy, and only three women, or 10 percent, developed cognitive problems during chemotherapy.

“These results,” Boivin says, “suggest that cognitive difficulties experienced by women with a new breast cancer diagnosis may be related to stress as a result of the diagnosis and other quality-of-life factors, and not simply due to the effects of chemotherapy or radiation.”

Boivin presented his results at the American Academy of Neurology’s 60th Anniversary Annual Meeting in Chicago. 

Source: Michael Boivin, MSU

Ivy Hughes, development news editor, can be reached here.