Study on impairment of verbal fluency in patients with castration-resistant prostate cancer after chemotherapy

Abstract

Objective To investigate the changes of verbal fluency test(VFT) in patients with castration resistant prostate cancer(CRPC) after chemotherapy. Methods 61 patients with CRPC were recruited.Thirty-one of those patients voluntarily accepted chemotherapy as CT group.The other thirty patients who did not received chemotherapy served as control group.CT group underwent VFT assessments at 3 time points: pre-chemotherapy (T1), during-chemotherapy (T2) and post-chemotherapy (T3). Patients in the control group were also assessed at the same time. Results (1)In phonetic fluency tasks, the interaction of time and group (time×group) between the CT group and control group was insignificant in the aspects of word capacity, cluster size, mean cluster size and phonetic switches(P>0.05). The effect of time between the CT group and control group was significant difference in word capacity, cluster size, mean cluster size and phonetic switches(P 0.05) .CT group and control group both produced more words at T2 and T3 compared with that at T1(P 0.05). The effect of time between the CT group and control group was significantly different in word capacity, cluster size and semantic switches(P 0.05). The control group produced more words at T2 and T3 than T1(P<0.05). The CT group had a smaller cluster size at T3 than T1 and T2, and it was aslo smaller than control Group(P<0.05). CT group had smaller cluster size at T3 than T2((5.47±1.28)vs(7.15±1.49), P<0.05). At T3 , the semantic switches of the CT group were more than T1, but less than control Group((20.81±3.63)vs(19.36±4.84)vs(21.54±6.18), P<0.05)). The semantic switches of CT group were less at T2 than T1((18.25±4.25)vs(19.36±4.84), (P<0.05)). Conclusion Standard dose chemotherapy has no significant impairment on the verbal fluency of patients with CRPC.Chemotherapy does not induce the impairment of patients’ phonetic fluency, but may have a negative influence on semantic fluency. Key words: Castration-resistant prostate; Chemotherapy; Verbal fluency; Cognition; Cognitive impairment