What symptoms can females experience during cancer treatment?

A really critical question for a young woman going through a chemotherapeutic or radiation treatment is not just the impact of these drugs on her ability to have a child, but on the impact of these treatments on the woman’s biology itself. So the ovary really has two purposes: one is to create the eggs that can be used to create the next generation of babies and young adults, and the other purpose is to provide the endocrine hormones that are necessary for a healthy body.

And so when you are treated with chemotherapeutics and radiation that impact the ovary, you’re not only affecting the eggs, you can in fact impact very directly those hormones—so a woman with a chemotherapeutic may in fact experience a series of menopause symptoms. When you lose the dominant follicle that’s making estrogen, you can actually experience weight gain, insomnia, you can have hot flashes, and all of these are not really associated with the chemotherapeutic but in fact are the consequence of the loss of the estrogen support of the ovary.

So one of the important things that we’re trying to provide information on is not just how to maintain fertility, if that’s something you’re interested in, but also to tell you about the symptom management and to think about the fact that what you’re going through is actually just a consequence of the suppression of the reproductive axis as a consequence of that chemotherapy. Now for some women, that suppression, or loss of the menstrual cyclicity, will actually just be during the time frame of the treatment, and in fact there will be a resumption of menstrual cyclicity after treatment is stopped.

For some women, however, that loss of menstrual cyclicity will be for the rest of their life, and so being able to think through what the consequences are of this early menopause is information that we want to provide to young women.