UMaine Research Seeks to Demystify Chemotherapy “Brain Fog
Contact: Thane Fremouw (207) 581-2041; Tom Weber (207) 581-3777
ORONO — Many people undergoing chemotherapy for cancer feel as if they are living in a mental fog that causes them to forget things and hampers their ability to learn new skills and concentrate on everyday tasks.
And while the condition is often temporary, occurring during treatment or immediately after, some cancer survivors continue to experience the frustrating symptoms years after their treatments have ended.
Research over the last several years has shown that cancer patients can indeed suffer a mild cognitive impairment following chemotherapy. The studies have yet to pinpoint, however, what actually causes the baffling condition, commonly known as chemobrain or chemofog, and why some people suffer from it and others do not.
Studies of the cognitive effects of chemotherapy have typically been complicated by such confounding factors as age, life history, anxiety, depression and fatigue. Could the foggy thinking be caused by the stress and worry people feel when they’re told they have cancer, as some studies have suggested, or might it be the physiological damage wrought by the cancer itself that triggers it? Recognizing that chemotherapy induces menopause, researchers are left to wonder what role, if any, hormones play in cognitive decline?
Thane Fremouw, an assistant professor of psychology at the University of Maine, along with Robert Ferguson, a clinical psychologist at Eastern Maine Medical in Bangor, are undertaking research that they hope will help answer those questions. Unlike other researchers who have studied chemobrain in humans, however, the team will explore the condition in mice instead and use genetic manipulation to identify risk factors.
“Normally you go from the animal to the human model,” says Fremouw, an animal cognition specialist whose work is being funded by the Maine Institute of Human Genetics and Health in Brewer. “But we’re trying something different by reversing that process. Our hope is that our mouse model will facilitate the search for treatments that reduce or eliminate the cognitive impairments in cancer survivors.”
The mouse model will allow researchers to better and more quickly control for factors such as stress and depression, Fremouw says. The team, which includes a UMaine graduate student and three undergraduates, will examine the cognitive consequences caused by different combinations of chemotherapy drugs, or cocktails, commonly prescribed in cancer therapy. The researchers will also treat the mice with various other drug therapies to see if those treatments help counteract the chemobrain condition.
“Regardless of where this leads,” Fremouw says of his research, “it’s important that we publicize this problem so that people can understand that whatever is happening to them is real, and not imaginary.”