Breast Cancer, Cognitive Impairment, and Dementia: An Opportunity For Prevention?

Lives change after a breast cancer diagnosis. When an acute personal ordeal persists for years as an emotional and financial nightmare, multiple domains of mental life, family relationships, and friendships are affected in many awful ways. Heightened fear of the unknown exacerbates symptoms and can reduce treatment efficacy. In this setting, it is unsurprising that cancer-related cognitive impairment1 (CRCI) affects a majority—perhaps 75%—during breast cancer treatment and persistent CRCI can endure among about 30% for many years. Some recent studies, but not all, suggest a link between breast cancer and progress to dementia and that CRCI seems a likely common clinical prodrome of incipient dementia. These links between breast cancer and CRCI/dementia are not trivial. First is the obvious relevance to understanding how cancers in general might increase risk of neurodegenerative disease. Most clinical neurologists are very familiar with chemotherapy-induced neuropathies2 with effects on treatment compliance, and a link with dementia is not unexpected. Second, as is discussed here, by extension, CRCI could provide a way to test interventions to prevent progress to dementia. A major opportunity to test CRCI reduction and dementia prevention is self-evident: More than 10 million US citizens are long-term survivors of a cancer diagnosis among whom breast cancer survivors are the most frequent. Many cancer survivors would be highly motivated to volunteer for clinical tr...
Source: Neurology Clinical Practice - Category: Neurology Authors: Tags: All Oncology, Alzheimer's disease, Vascular dementia Editorial Source Type: research