Change in Cognitive Function After Chemotherapy: a Prospective Longitudinal Study in Breast Cancer Patients

Some breast cancer survivors ex-perience cognitive decline following chemotherapy. We prospectively ex-amined changes in cognitive perfor-mance among high-risk breast cancer patients who had received high-dose chemotherapy with cyclophospha-mide, thiotepa, and carboplatin (CTC group; n = 28) or standard-dose che-motherapy with 5-fl uorouracil, epiru-bicin, and cyclophosphamide (FEC group; n = 39); stage-I breast cancer patients who had received no systemic chemotherapy (no-CT group; n = 57); and healthy control subjects (n = 60). All patients underwent neuropsycho-logic testing before and 6 months after treatment (12-month interval); control subjects underwent repeated testing over a 6-month interval. No differenc-es in cognitive functioning between the four groups were observed at the fi rst assessment. More of the CTC group than the control subjects experienced a deterioration in cognitive perfor-mance over time (25 % versus 6.7%; odds ratio [OR] = 5.3, 95 % confi dence interval [CI] = 1.3 to 21.2, P =.02). No such difference was observed for the FEC or the no-CT groups (FEC versu