Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
Review
. 2023 Apr 28:10:544-553.
doi: 10.1016/j.toxrep.2023.04.015. eCollection 2023.

An update on neurobiological mechanisms involved in the development of chemotherapy-induced cognitive impairment (CICI)

Laura Catalina Murillo  1 , Jhon Jairo Sutachan  1 , Sonia Luz Albarracín  1
Affiliations
Review

An update on neurobiological mechanisms involved in the development of chemotherapy-induced cognitive impairment (CICI)

Laura Catalina Murillo et al. Toxicol Rep. .

Abstract

Cancer is the second leading cause of death worldwide despite efforts in early diagnosis of the disease and advances in treatment. The use of drugs that exert toxic effects on tumor cells or chemotherapy is one of the most widely used treatments against cancer. However, its low toxic selectivity affects both healthy cells and cancer cells. It has been reported that chemotherapeutic drugs may generate neurotoxicity that induces deleterious effects of chemotherapy in the central nervous system. In this sense, patients report decreased cognitive abilities, such as memory, learning, and some executive functions after chemotherapy. This chemotherapy-induced cognitive impairment (CICI) develops during treatment and persists even after chemotherapy. Here we present a review of the literature on the main neurobiological mechanisms involved in CICI using a Boolean formula following the steps of the PRISMA guidelines that were used to perform statements searches in various databases. The main mechanisms described in the literature to explain CRCI include direct and indirect mechanisms that induce neurotoxicity by chemotherapeutic agents. Therefore, this review provides a general understanding of the neurobiological mechanisms of CICI and the possible therapeutic targets to prevent it..

Keywords: Chemobrain; Chemotherapy drugs, CICI; Cognitive impairment, Neurotoxicity.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Figures

ga1
Graphical abstract
Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews (PRISMA) flowchart for articles and reviews search process. 408 documents were identified with the Boolean search in the following databases: Academic Search Complete = 39, Google Scholar = 157, Nature = 2, ProQuest = 50, ScienceDirect = 22, Scopus = 122, SpringerLink = 12, Taylor & Francis, = 3 and Web of Science = 1. Additional documents from the reference lists = 11. Finally, 283 records were screened and finally 51 articles were selected for full-text review. Created with BioRender.com.
Fig. 2
Fig. 2
Chemotherapy-induced Neurotoxicity Mechanisms. The blue lines indicate mechanisms occurring in the prefrontal cortex, the green lines indicate mechanisms occurring in the hippocampus, the orange line indicates processes occurring in the corpus callosum and the red line indicates processes occurring in the cerebellum. Created with BioRender.com.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

    1. Aggarwal S., Yurlova L., Simons M. Central nervous system myelin: structure, synthesis and assembly. Trends Cell Biol. 2011;21(10):585–593. doi: 10.1016/j.tcb.2011.06.004. - DOI - PubMed
    1. Alexander T.C., Simecka C.M., Kiffer F., Groves T., Anderson J., Carr H., Wang J., Carter G., Allen A.R. Changes in cognition and dendritic complexity following intrathecal methotrexate and cytarabine treatment in a juvenile murine model. Behav. Brain Res. 2018;346:21–28. doi: 10.1016/j.bbr.2017.12.008. - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Alhowail A.H., Bloemer J., Majrashi M., Pinky P.D., Bhattacharya S., Yongli Z., Bhattacharya D., Eggert M., Woodie L., Buabeid M.A., Johnson N., Broadwater A., Smith B., Dhanasekaran M., Arnold R.D., Suppiramaniam V. Doxorubicin-induced neurotoxicity is associated with acute alterations in synaptic plasticity, apoptosis, and lipid peroxidation. Toxicol. Mech. Methods. 2019;29(6):457–466. doi: 10.1080/15376516.2019.1600086. - DOI - PubMed
    1. Ali M.A., Menze E.T., Tadros M.G., Tolba M.F. Caffeic acid phenethyl ester counteracts doxorubicin-induced chemobrain in Sprague-Dawley rats: emphasis on the modulation of oxidative stress and neuroinflammation. Neuropharmacology. 2020;181 doi: 10.1016/j.neuropharm.2020.108334. - DOI - PubMed
    1. Allen B.D., Apodaca L.A., Syage A.R., Markarian M., Baddour A.A.D., Minasyan H., Alikhani L., Lu C., West B.L., Giedzinski E., Baulch J.E., Acharya M.M. Attenuation of neuroinflammation reverses Adriamycin-induced cognitive impairments. Acta Neuropathol. Commun. 2019;7(1):186. doi: 10.1186/s40478-019-0838-8. - DOI - PMC - PubMed

LinkOut - more resources