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04/29/2025 | Press release | Distributed by Public on 04/29/2025 06:39

Couple satisfaction linked to fewer cognitive issues with chemo

Study results showed that the more satisfied breast cancer patients were in their relationship, the more protected they were from cognitive changes over the course of chemotherapy.
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29
April
2025
|
08:23 AM
America/New_York

Couple satisfaction linked to fewer cognitive issues with chemo

Study of breast cancer patients finds general social support is also beneficial

A satisfying intimate relationship may help diminish chemotherapy-related cognitive problems experienced by patients with breast cancer, a new study suggests.

General social support was also protective, but the association was less robust and lasting than a satisfying intimate partnership, which was characterized by fewer declines in both objective measures of cognitive setbacks and patient self-reports of subtle changes such as forgetting grocery list items and being unable to multitask.

The findings suggest that couples therapy aimed at enhancing relationship quality could be a helpful option for partnered patients undergoing chemo, researchers said.

The team also found that blood levels of the hormone oxytocin, an important player in social bonding, decreased significantly over the course of chemotherapy treatment, which may hint at a biological mechanism that could one day be targeted to reduce chemo's side effects.

"There are a lot of cancer treatments, but there are very few treatments for the behavioral side effects of cancer. So we need to understand how they're happening in order to create useful interventions for the side effects," said senior author Leah Pyter, director of the Institute for Behavioral Medicine Research at The Ohio State University and associate professor of psychiatry and behavioral health in the College of Medicine.

"Before this study, we didn't understand that bolstering the intimate partnership before the patient undergoes chemo might attenuate their cognitive side effects."

The research was published recently in the journal Psychoneuroendocrinology.

The 48 participating women with breast cancer were part of a larger study examining links between chemo-induced disruption of the gut microbiome, inflammation and cognitive decline.

Participants completed objective tests assessing verbal learning, word association, visual attention and short-term memory. Separately, they reported on changes to their concentration, memory, word retrieval and mental clarity and how any declines affected their quality of life. These measures were taken before, during and after chemo treatment.

Decreases in mental fitness did not meet the clinical definition of cognitive impairment, but several changes were considered clinically meaningful.

"It was nice to be able to test these patients before they had chemo and then again after, because people can be affected by chemo and still be within normal ranges - but for them, it's not normal," Pyter said.

For this study, first author Melina Seng, then a master's student and now a senior research technician in Pyter's lab, followed up with the partnered patients to assess their intimate relationship satisfaction and how much social support from friends and family they received during chemo treatment.

Statistical analysis revealed associations between changes in cognitive scores and social factors, finding that the more satisfied the patients were in their relationship, the more protected they were from cognitive changes over the course of chemotherapy.

"There was less decline in cognitive function for those who had a good amount of social support, but there were more associations and more enduring associations between protected cognition and the highly satisfying relationship than just with general social support," Pyter said. "We interpreted that as an indication that the most important social relationship is that intimate partnership.

"There's group therapy for chemo patients, which is social support, and this study would suggest that while that therapy might be beneficial, marital or partner therapy used in other medical contexts to improve the quality of the relationship might also be a good approach for patients receiving chemo."

While Seng hoped to find associations between oxytocin levels, cognitive function and social support, no clear connections could be detected. The results did show, however, that the hormone and its receptor were affected by chemo.

In particular, the level of oxytocin circulating in the blood decreased significantly during chemo and returned to baseline levels after treatment, suggesting that chemotherapy could be affecting the hypothalamus region of the brain, where oxytocin is made.

"Oxytocin is well-known to play roles in social interactions and has been called the 'love' hormone, but it does so many other things," Seng said. "To our knowledge, no one has ever studied oxytocin and chemotherapy before, so the fact that we saw a very strong decrease in oxytocin from pre-chemotherapy to during chemotherapy is very interesting and is something that should be investigated further."

Both Pyter and Seng noted that with increased breast cancer survivorship comes an urgent need to address lingering side effects of treatment.

"Chemotherapy is one of the best treatments we have for cancer and for other diseases beyond cancer. It affects a lot of people and is very effective," Pyter said. "We have more survivors, which is fantastic. Our research is focused on issues that are less well-studied, trying to make sure that survivors' quality of life is as high as possible."

This work was supported by the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences and The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center.

Additional co-authors, all from Ohio State, were Seth Adarkwah Yiadom, Lauren Otto-Dobos, Sagar Sardesai, Nicole Williams, Margaret Gatti-Mays, Daniel Stover, Preeti Sudheendra, Erica Dawson, Robert Wesolowski, Baldwin Way, Erica Glasper and Rebecca Andridge.

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More Ohio State News

25
,
| 11:03 AM America/New_York

Scientists are working to shed new light on an enduring climate mystery - one that, if solved, could help them make more accurate predictions about the planet's future.

In a new study, data from ice cores collected from Greenland, Antarctica and various tropical mountains were compared to climate model simulations made of the Holocene, a geologic era that began about 11,700 years ago. Natural data and climate simulations of this time, specifically for Earth's average temperature, have been puzzlingly at odds with each other, most notably in tropical mountains.

Discrepancies in the long-term trend between the model predictions and the natural proxy records have led researchers to call this mismatch the Holocene temperature conundrum.

Now, using oxygen isotope data from ice cores, researchers found that ice core data and computer models of the Holocene do match when analyzing polar regions like Greenland and Antarctica. However, that is not the case for Earth's tropical mountains, said Yuntao Bao, lead author of the study and a postdoctoral scholar in geography at The Ohio State University.

"Current climate models posit that the planet experienced an early, steady increase in warming throughout the Holocene, but most of the paleoclimate samples suggest that later in the Holocene Earth experienced a global cooling period," said Bao.

The team found that ice core data from tropical mountains like Kilimanjaro in Tanzania and Huascarán in Peru suggest possible cooling by 0.8 to 1.8 degrees Celsius, whereas models suggest a prolonged warming by 1.5 degrees.

These climate variations were driven by orbital forcing, or changes in the Earth-sun orbit that influence the global climate. However, the model-data mismatch over tropical mountains presents a challenge for researchers in explaining the underlying causes of tropical mountain oxygen isotopic ratios and the associated temperature changes during the Holocene. Climate simulations also tend to overlook important factors, such as vegetation and land use, that could have influenced Holocene temperatures, said Bao.

"All models have different kinds of uncertainties," he said. "But by using ice core isotopic data as a guide, we can find a better way to evaluate how good or how bad our climate models are."

The study was recently published in the journal Communications Earth and Environment.

The type of simulation the researchers used to address the conundrum is called the Community Earth System Model, a system that incorporates global details like atmosphere, ocean, land and river runoff components to build precise past and future climate projections.

While scientists are still unclear on why the model fails to explain the mechanisms behind these discrepancies over the tropical mountain areas, the study does note that no single factor, such as global temperature fluctuations or heavy rainfall, could effectively explain these Holocene-era patterns.

Still, putting effort into understanding these issues is well worth it to improve future paleoclimate interpretations, said Lonnie Thompson, co-author of the study and a professor in earth sciences at Ohio State.

"This type of study is extremely important because we're looking at both the shortcomings in the data and the models," he said. "The natural world is very complex, so when you try to capture this and put it into a model, that's a big job."

Most climate models that don't account for feedbacks like land use, vegetation, dust and volcanic emissions aren't as accurate at predicting the natural world, said Thompson. On the other hand, proxy data collected from ice cores are some of the most reproducible types of climate evidence from one century to the next, so paleoclimatologists consider them reliable narrators of Earth's complex history.

"If technology cannot capture these very subtle natural variabilities, then it raises big questions about what its output says for the future," Thompson said.

The study concludes by calling for the paleoclimate community to help refine global climate models and bolster future climate projections, especially during a time when Earth is experiencing rapid biodiversity losses.

"Big breakthroughs in science are going to come along the boundaries of collaboration," said Thompson. "We can work together to tackle these issues."

Co-authors include Zhengyu Liu and Ellen Mosley-Thompson from Ohio State, as well as Lingfeng Wan from Ocean University of China and Jiuyou Lu from Laoshan Laboratory in China. The study was supported by the National Science Foundation and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

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