When cancer patients are treated with chemotherapy, it’s common for them to experience cognitive issues that can persist well after treatment. Often referred to as chemo brain, this can include issues focusing, remembering things, and even learning. Because this can be so frustrating for patients and survivors, researchers are trying to better understand it. New research indicates social support, especially from a significant other, may help.

A study recently published in the journal Psychoneuroendocrinology investigated whether relationship satisfaction or levels of the love-related hormone oxytocin had any impact on chemo brain among breast cancer patients. To study this, the research team had 48 partnered breast cancer patients undergo cognitive assessments, provide blood samples, and fill out questionnaires on their relationships and general social support. This was repeated three times: before, during, and after chemo.

According to the findings, patients with high relationship satisfaction demonstrated fewer signs of objective cognitive decline, which includes areas like verbal learning, word association, visual attention, and short-term memory. They also suffered less from self-reported issues with concentration, memory, word retrieval, and mental clarity. Higher perceived social support in general also showed benefits, but not as much as relationship satisfaction.

This suggests that helping couples work on their relationships may be a good thing to include within treatment.

Leah Pyter, senior author and director of the Institute for Behavioral Medicine Research at The Ohio State University, says, “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. 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.”

As for circulating oxytocin levels, the team did find that they decline substantially during chemotherapy, though they didn’t find that that was linked with social support and cognitive function. However, it does suggest that chemo may impact the area of the brain that produces oxytocin, which the researchers say merits further study.

You can read the whole study here. To help contribute to more breast cancer research that can help patients and survivors, click here!