Knowing that someone or yourself having been diagnosed with cancer causes a natural impact on how a person feels emotionally and physically. Cancer is a serious complication that when a person hears about it, they instantly think that there isn't much time left to live. Not only do patients have to go through the pain of chemotherapy and feeling weak and fatigue, they go through an emotional rollercoaster of fear of death, anxiety, and many levels of stress. These are natural emotional reactions that cancer patients face when they hear that they or their loved ones are diagnosed with cancer. However, some studies showed that not only are thoughts or facts that a person has cancer may trigger these emotions but the emotions are the result of tumors themselves and perhaps chemotherapy.
To put this to the test, Leah Pyter, a behavioral neuroscientist used rats, which do not carry the burden of knowing they have cancer, to determine if tumors have an effect on mental disorders such as anxiety and depression. She placed 12 rats that were injected with mammary tumors along with 12 controls that had no tumors through several behavioral tests. One test showed that rats placed in a cylinder of water were considered more depressed if they devoted more time to floating, as opposed to paddling, (Couzin-Frankel 2009). This indicated that the depressed rats that had tumors were less active than the healthy rats. Another test showed that the rats which were not depressed consumed more sucrose. Also, rats that buried more marbles in the ground showed signs of obsessive compulsive, which indicate anxiety. In the induced rats, levels of cytokines, signaling chemicals which are released by tumors of cells, increased in the blood and in the hippocampus of the brain causing them to induce depressive behaviors; the hippocampus is involved in regulating emotional behavior.
It is natural for humans to feel the mental burden of being diagnosed with cancer. This causes tremendous distress, however, scientist have found that not only the natural feeling that humans get causes these stress but they are also caused by neurological release of chemicals from tumor cells secreted into the hippocampus of the brains that plays an important role of depression and anxiety.
Citation Information
Couzin-Frankel J, compiler. 2009 "Tumors Trigger Cancer Blues" ScienceNOW Daily News [Internet] Washington DC and Cambridge, UK: High Wire Press; 2009 [cited 2009 May 19]. Available from http://sciencenow.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/2009/519/2
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