Chemotherapy for lymphoma in children does not affect cerebral glucose metabolism in the early post-treatment phase up to 6 months

Objectives Chemotherapy is clinically believed to affect cognitive function adversely. However, to our knowledge, there has been no systematic, quantitative functional imaging study to test this hypothesis. We compared the cerebral glucose metabolism before and after chemotherapy for lymphoma in children, using automated, voxel-based and region-based statistical analysis.

Methods We identified 16 children (10 male, 6 female) aged 13.6 +/- 8.4 (mean +/- 2SD) who had undergone various regimens of chemotherapy for lymphoma, as well as diagnostic (pre-therapy) and follow-up FDG PET/CT scans (Gemini and Gemini TF, Philips Healthcare) within 6 months of initiation of chemotherapy. Their brain PET images were extracted from the whole body images, and voxel-based and region-based statistical comparison was made between pre- and post-chemotherapy groups using MIM 5.3 Beta software, (MIM Software Inc.) and two-tailed paired t-test. P-values of <0.05 were considered statistically significant.

Results No significant difference was observed between pre- and post-chemotherapy glucose metabolism within the brain.

Conclusions Lymphoma chemotherapy regimens in children do not affect overall cerebral glucose metabolism for up to 6 months after treatment. Long-term effects of chemotherapy on the pediatric brain remain to be studied