Student and Faculty Publications
Publication Date
1-1-2023
Journal
Brain, Behavior, and Immunity
Abstract
Persistent fatigue is a debilitating side effect that impacts a significant proportion of cancer survivors for which there is not yet an FDA-approved treatment. While certainly a multi-factorial problem, persistent fatigue could be due, in part, to associations learned during treatment. Therefore, we sought to investigate the role of associative learning in the persistence of fatigue using a preclinical model of cancer survivorship. For this purpose, we used a murine model of human papilloma virus-related head and neck cancer paired with a curative regimen of cisplatin-based chemoradiation in male C57BL/6J mice. Fatigue-like behavior was assessed by measuring variations in voluntary wheel running using a longitudinal design. Treatment robustly decreased voluntary wheel running, and this effect persisted for more than a month posttreatment. However, when wheels were removed during treatment, to minimize treatment-related fatigue, mice showed a more rapid return to baseline running levels. We confirmed that the delayed recovery observed in mice with continual wheel access was not due to increased treatment-related toxicity, in fact running attenuated cisplatin-induced kidney toxicity. Finally, we demonstrated that re-exposure to a treatment-related olfactory cue acutely re-instated fatigue. These data provide the first demonstration that associative processes can modulate the persistence of cancer-related fatigue-like behavior.
Keywords
Humans, Male, Mice, Animals, Mice, Inbred C57BL, Cancer Survivors, Motor Activity, Research, Neoplasms
Included in
Bioinformatics Commons, Biological Phenomena, Cell Phenomena, and Immunity Commons, Biomedical Informatics Commons, Mental and Social Health Commons, Oncology Commons
Comments
Supplementary Materials
PMID: 36323360