'Chemo brain' may persist years after treatment

'Chemo brain' may persist years after treatment

Women on chemotherapy for breast cancer may have tiny memory and thinking impairments compared with cancer-free women more than 20 years after their treatment, Dutch researchers have found.

Previous studies have suggested some women may experience "chemo brain" during or after treatment, but the new report is the first to test them so many years out, researchers said.

Still, the findings can't prove that chemotherapy itself is to blame for any changes in mental dexterity, and the differences in women who'd received the cell-killing treatment were "subtle."

"These are not people who are showing signs of what we would consider to be serious cognitive impairment or even mild cognitive impairment necessarily, they simply are scoring a little bit lower" on thinking and memory tests, said Barbara Collins, a neuropsychologist who has studied chemotherapy-related cognitive changes at Ottawa Hospital in Ontario, Canada.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/46562713/ns/health-cancer/