White Matter Microstructure and Information Processing at the Completion of Chemotherapy-Only Treatment for Pediatric Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia

ABSTRACT

Little is known about white matter microstructure and its role in information processing abilities of children treated for acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) early posttreatment. Twenty-one survivors of ALL and 18 controls (7–16 years) underwent neurocognitive assessment. A subsample underwent diffusion-weighted magnetic resonance imaging. The ALL group performed poorer on measures of processing capacity, and had widespread areas of decreased fractional anisotropy and increased radial diffusivity. Significant group by white matter microstructure interactions was found when predicting processing speed. Findings provide evidence for an atypical brain–behavior relationship early posttreatment for childhood ALL. Replication in a larger sample is required.

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank the participants and their families for generously giving up their time to participate in this study. We would also like to thank Dr Chris Adamson and Dr Jian Chen for their assistance with processing the imaging data and the ALLaboard research team for the assistance with recruitment and data collection.

Declaration of interest

The authors have no conflicts of interest to declare

Supplementary data

Supplemental data for this article can be access on the publisher’s website.

Additional information

Funding

The ALLaboard study was generously supported by The Leukaemia Foundation, The Royal Children’s Hospital Foundation, Monash Health and the Victorian Government’s Operational Infrastructure Support Program. Simone Darling was financially supported by an Australian Government Research Training Program Scholarship and an Murdoch Children's Research Institute Postgraduate Health Research Scholarship (MCRI) Postgraduate Health Research Scholarship.