Common Chemotherapy Drugs Can Kill Healthy Brain Cells
Common drugs used to treat cancer may be more harmful to healthy brain cells than the cancer cells that they are intended to destroy. That is the conclusion of a study conducted by researchers at the University of Rochester Medical Center and published today in the Journal of Biology. The results, which also indicate that chemotherapy may cause long-term brain damage, represent the closest that scientists have come to pinpointing the underlying physiological cause of "chemo brain," a common side effect of cancer treatment that scientists are only now beginning to comprehend.