Cognition in Breast Cancer Patients: The Impact of Cancer-related Stress

Primary hypothesis:

*The adverse effects of cancer and cancer therapy on cognitive function in breast cancer patients are entirely or partly mediated by stress and the ensuing dysfunction of the HPA-axis.

Secondary objectives:

• Determining the effect of cancer diagnosis, chemotherapy, disease-related stress, acute stress response, posttraumatic stress disorder, posttraumatic stress symptoms, anxiety, and depression on the HPA-axis in breast cancer patients
• Determining the effect of cognitive dysfunction assessed with neuropsychological tests, cancer diagnosis, chemotherapy, disease-related stress, acute stress response, posttraumatic stress disorder, posttraumatic stress symptoms, anxiety, and depression on subjective cognitive function in breast cancer patients
• Prevalence of acute stress response, posttraumatic stress disorder and posttraumatic stress symptoms, and extent of cancer-specific stress in breast cancer patients treated with or without chemotherapy

Inclusion criteria

, both patient groups:

• primary breast cancer, stage 0-IIIc, therapy not yet started
• informed consent

Inclusion criteria

, healthy control group:

• breast diagnostics with benign result (no treatment necessary)
• informed consent

Exclusion criteria

• not fluent in German
• substance abuse
• history of psychosis
• history of neurologic disorder
• previous systemic cancer treatment
• Addison' disease
• Cushing's syndrome