Fatigue Fairly Uncommon After Breast Cancer Chemo

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - About one in five women with breast cancer experience fatigue after treatment with adjuvant chemotherapy -- whether standard or high-dose -- according to a report in the Journal of Clinical Oncology.

"Overall, these findings offer hope for breast cancer survivors, suggesting that most patients will recover their energy within one year after treatment onset and that the incidence of posttreatment fatigue is relatively low," writes Dr. Julienne E. Bower from University of California, Los Angeles, California in a related editorial.

Adjuvant chemotherapy is chemotherapy that is given in addition to surgery or other treatment. Adjuvant chemo delays recurrence and improves long-term survival of women with breast cancer, the long-term effects of such treatment on the patient's well-being have not been thoroughly investigated.

Dr. Elisabeth G. E. de Vries from University Medical Center Groningen, the Netherlands, and colleagues investigated the effects of standard or high-dose chemotherapy on changes in fatigue, hemoglobin, mental health, pain, and menopausal status in 403 women who were disease-free after treatment for breast cancer.

More than 60 percent of the women did not report fatigue at any of the four time points over 3-years' follow-up, the team reports, and only 12 women (3 percent) reported fatigue at all four points.

Twenty percent of the women reported fatigue once during follow-up, the results indicate.

The mean hemoglobin level was slightly lower in women who received high-dose chemotherapy, compared with women who received standard-dose chemotherapy, but there was no correlation between fatigue and hemoglobin level at any time point.

Mental health scores and muscle and joint pain did not differ between the two treatment groups, the researchers note. However, there were significant correlations between fatigue and mental health scores and between fatigue and the presence of joint pain and muscle pain, with mental health score being the strongest predictor of fatigue at all four time points.

Identifying the causes of and contributors to cancer-related fatigue should help facilitate the development of targeted interventions.

SOURECE: Journal of Clinical Oncology, November 20, 2005.