COMT genotype associated with treatment related cognitive deficits (chemobrain)!

[imdavidson]

Lani and Jackie,

Thanks so much for the information and for all of the resources you provide on this forum.

As you may know, I try to stay pretty current on this topic of "chemo brain," but for some reason, I never received a press release on this particular study so I'm really grateful to you for mentioning it here.

I read the abstract and then contacted the lead author who very kindly sent me the full-text of the article which includes a discussion section about the limitations of the study. And there are several. Still, the research looks promising and so I asked him these questions:

1) Are you recommending that cancer patients request this test prior to starting treatment?

2) If so, should they and their doctors make treatment decisions based on the outcome of this test?

And this was his response: "I do not think that it is appropriate for persons to be tested for the COMT genotype. As you will see in the Discussion of our paper, we specifically indicate that we do not believe that our results should alter clinical treatment practices, but they do provide information concerning the nature of cognitive deficits among persons who have been treated for breast cancer."

So even though this type of test is not yet a reliable predictor of who will experience cognitive impairment, it still moves the science forward. That's good news.

And by the way, there have been other studies that have looked at how genetic alleles affect cognitive function in cancer patients. One that we discuss at length in our book was by Sloan-Kettering researcher Tim Ahles. He and his team found that people who carry an allele called, "E4" may be at higher risk for developing both Alzheimer's disease and cognitive problems from chemotherapy. Those findings also are still experimental and require further study.

All the best,

Idelle Davidson