A noninvasive treatment may help to counter 'chemo brain' impairment often seen in chemotherapy patients: Exposure to light and sound with a frequency of 40 hertz protected brain cells from chemotherapy-induced damage in mice, researchers found.
This treatment, which was originally developed as a way to treat Alzheimer's disease, appears to have widespread effects that could help with a variety of neurological disorders, the researchers say. In the new study, the researchers set out to see whether this treatment could also counteract the cognitive effects of chemotherapy treatment. Research has shown that these drugs can induce inflammation in the brain, as well as other detrimental effects such as loss of white matter -- the networks of nerve fibers that help different parts of the brain communicate with each other.
After three weeks, mice that received cisplatin but not gamma therapy showed many of the expected effects of chemotherapy: brain volume shrinkage, DNA damage, demyelination, and inflammation. These mice also had reduced populations of oligodendrocytes, the brain cells responsible for producing myelin.
The researchers also showed that the gamma treatment improved the signs of chemo brain in mice that received a different chemotherapy drug, methotrexate, which is used to treat breast, lung, and other types of cancer. "My lab's major focus now, in terms of clinical application, is Alzheimer's; but hopefully we can test this approach for a few other indications, too," Tsai says.TaeHyun Kim, Benjamin T. James, Martin C. Kahn, Cristina Blanco-Duque, Fatema Abdurrob, Md Rezaul Islam, Nicolas S. Lavoie, Manolis Kellis, Li-Huei Tsai.
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