People who have survived cancer may have higher risks of having cognitive impairment , suggests a new study.
People who have survived cancer may have higher risks of having cognitive impairment , suggests a new study.
Researchers from University of Southern California had found that patients who survived cancer treatment to live a long life have twice as much risk as their healthy counterparts of having cognitive dysfunctions.Researchers have studied 702 survivors of cancer and their twins with the help of standardized mental test interviews. Participants who scored the highest were the ones who had difficulty in communicating, orientation, and recall problems in everyday life, and they were categorized as those with cognitive dysfunctions.
The researchers had taken twins as control so as to make sure that the cognitive problems cannot be attributed to other factors like age, etc.
The results showed that about 15% of the cancer surviving twins reported cognitive impairments. Previous studies done in short term cancer survivors have also repaired cognitive impairments. This is the first time long term cancer survivors have reported significant cognitive damage, suggesting the possibility that cognition malfunctions may become sever with time for cancer survivors.
The research is published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.
