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Depression affects cancer survival
Inflammatory pathways hold the key
Promise - Fall 2012
iStockphoto.com/Diego Cervo
By Will Fitzgerald
Symptoms of depression can affect survival among patients recently diagnosed with metastatic kidney cancer, report MD Anderson researchers in the journal PLoS ONE. The key to explaining this link, they find, may be inflammatory gene regulation.
“Our findings, and those of others, suggest that mental health and social well-being can affect biological processes, which influence cancer-related outcomes,” says Lorenzo Cohen, Ph.D., professor in MD Anderson’s departments of General Oncology and Behavioral Science and director of the institution’s Integrative Medicine Program.
Lorenzo Cohen, Ph.D.
Cohen, the lead author, says the findings suggest that standard care should include mental health screening.
“We now understand some of the possible biological pathways that explain the association between depression and survival,” says Cohen.
Research funding was from the Dana Foundation, the Mary and David Wolff Family Foundation, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the National Institutes of Health and the MD Anderson Cancer Center Support Grant.
Please visit MD Anderson’s online newsroom at: mdanderson.org/newsroom.
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Promise - Fall 2012
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