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Chemotherapy helps many women survive breast cancer, but new research suggests that chemotherapy may also accelerate biological aging beyond chronological age and increase the risk of earlier death from other causes. The findings point to a need to explore whether interventions to slow or reverse biological aging could improve long-term health for breast cancer survivors.

The study, by researchers at Georgetown University's Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center and colleagues, appeared in JAMA Network Open. This research is the first to estimate the lifetime balance of the benefits of curing breast cancer versus possible acceleration of biological aging using population-based simulation modeling.

"Female breast cancer survivors comprise the single largest segment of the 18.6 million cancer survivors in the United States. However, some forms of chemotherapy that extend survival have triggered a secondary crisis: treatment-induced molecular damage to the body's cells and organs, causing acceleration of biological age," says the study's senior author, Jeanne Mandelblatt, director of Georgetown Lombardi's Institute for Cancer and Aging Research (I-CARE).

"Chemotherapy-induced biologic aging can persist for years, and the effects of this acceleration are not visible for many years."

She notes that this accelerated biological aging can result in loss of healthy life years due to earlier onset of aging diseases and conditions like frailty and cognitive problems.

"The key to our methodology is accounting for the fact that while chemotherapy improves breast cancer survival, treatment can also increase damage to normal tissues.

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