Background/Objectives: Breast cancer chemotherapy patients and survivors face cognitive side effects that are not fully understood. Neuroimaging can provide a unique way to study these effects; however, it can be difficult to recruit large numbers of subjects. Our meta-analysis aims to synthesize volumetric neuroimaging data to highlight consistent findings in regional brain volume changes to further advance our understanding of the chemotherapy-related cognitive impairments faced by breast cancer patients and survivors. Methods: An Activation Likelihood Estimation analysis was conducted across the data from eight voxel-based morphometry experiments examining changes in the brains of breast cancer patients and survivors exposed to chemotherapy over time and three voxel-based morphometry experiments comparing chemotherapy-exposed subjects to controls with and without breast cancer. Results: There were consistent volume reductions across the whole brain in both experiment groups. The subjects’ over-time analysis showed peak consistency among the studies in the right inferior frontal gyrus and the left insula. Conclusions: Chemotherapy for non-central nervous system cancers such as breast cancer can cause physical changes throughout the brain that can be quantitatively measured by neuroimaging methodologies and may underlie persistent cognitive deficits in some individuals.
背景/目的：乳腺癌化疗患者及幸存者面临尚未完全明确的认知副作用。神经影像技术为研究此类效应提供了独特途径，但大规模受试者招募存在困难。本研究通过荟萃分析整合脑容量神经影像数据，揭示区域性脑体积变化的一致性规律，以深化对乳腺癌患者及幸存者化疗相关认知障碍机制的理解。方法：采用激活似然估计法对八项纵向追踪化疗乳腺癌患者脑部变化的体素形态测量研究，以及三项对比化疗暴露组与含/不含乳腺癌对照组的体素形态测量实验数据进行整合分析。结果：两组实验均显示全脑体积一致性缩减。纵向分析表明，右额下回与左脑岛区域在各研究中呈现最显著的体积变化一致性。结论：针对乳腺癌等非中枢神经系统肿瘤的化疗可引发全脑结构性改变，此类可通过神经影像技术定量检测的变化，可能是部分个体出现持续性认知缺陷的神经生物学基础。
肿瘤(癌症)患者之家