Background: Cognitive and language dysfunction is common among patients with glioma and has a significant impact on survival and health-related quality of life (HRQOL). Little is known about the factors that make individual patients more or less susceptible to the cognitive sequelae of the disease. A better understanding of the individual and population characteristics related to cognitive function in glioma patients is required to appropriately stratify patients, prognosticate, and develop more efficacious treatment regimens. There is evidence that allelic variation among genes involved in neurotransmission and synaptic plasticity are related to neurocognitive performance in states of health and neurologic disease.
Methods: We studied the association of single-nucleotide polymorphism variations in brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF, rs6265), dopamine receptor 2 (DRD2, rs1076560), and catechol-O-methyltransferase (COMT, rs4680) with neurocognitive function and ability to return to work in glioma patients at diagnosis and at 3 months. We developed a functional score based on the number of high-performance alleles that correlates with the capacity for patients to return to work.
Results: Patients with higher-performing alleles have better scores on neurocognitive testing with the Repeatable Battery for the Assessment of Neuropsychological Status and Stroop test, but not the Trail Making Test.
Conclusions: A better understanding of the genetic contributors to neurocognitive performance in glioma patients and capacity for functional recovery is necessary to develop improved treatment strategies based on patient-specific factors.
Keywords: cognition; glioma; health-related quality of life; language; return to work.