New MRI Gauges Response to Brain Cancer Therapy
Reported March 30, 2005
(Ivanhoe Newswire)
— Researchers from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor believe theyve found a new and better way of determining whether treatments for brain cancer are getting the job done.
They developed a special type of magnetic resonance imaging that tracks progress by revealing the movement of water in the brain. Any change in water movement is considered a good sign, because water movement is typically blocked by cancer cells. If water appears to be moving more freely, that means cancer cells have died. If water moves less freely, it means cancer cells are swelling up and in the process of dying.
The study involved 20 brain cancer patients who had the special MRIs — dubbed diffusion MRIs — before beginning cancer therapy and then again three weeks later. They also had traditional MRI scans done about six weeks after the end of their seven-week therapy to see if the tumor shrunk. Results showed the diffusion MRI at three weeks was 100-percent accurate in predicting the outcome measured at the end of treatment.
Getting a handle on how well cancer treatment is going after just three weeks, report the authors, will allow doctors to either continue treatment if it is working, or stop the treatment and possibly try something else if it is not working.
Brain Ross, Ph.D., says the new MRIs will have a big impact on patient quality of life, noting, Do you want to go through seven weeks of treatment only to find two months later that it had no effect? Using MRI tumor diffusion values to accurately predict the treatment response early on could allow some patients to switch to a more beneficial therapy and avoid the side effects of a prolonged and ineffective treatment.
SOURCE: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2005
