Abstract Objectives The long-term memory aging of middle-aged and older cancer survivors is not fully understood and is largely limited to the United States (US) context. We compared long-term memory trajectories before and after an incident cancer diagnosis with the memory trajectories of similarly aged cancer-free adults in the US and England. Methods Incident cancer diagnosis and memory (immediate and delayed recall) were assessed during biennial interviews in the US Health and Retirement Study (HRS; n = 13,037) and the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing (ELSA; n = 8,579) from 2002 to 2018. Within country, multivariable adjusted linear mixed-effects models estimated the standardized memory trajectories in participants with and without cancer. Results Prior to diagnosis, cancer survivors had a memory advantage compared to cancer-free individuals, within each country (difference for cancer survivors in the US: 0.10 SD units 95% CI: 0.05, 0.14 and in England: 0.14 SD units 95% CI: 0.07, 0.20). Cancer survivors in the US experienced an acute decline in memory function immediately following diagnosis (-0.08 SD units; 95% CI: -0.11, -0.04), which was not experienced by cancer survivors in England (0.01 SD units; 95% CI: -0.04, 0.07). Long-term post-diagnosis memory trajectories were similar for cancer survivors and cancer-free participants alike in both countries. Conclusion The acute decline in memory function associated with a new cancer diagnosis among cancer survivors in the US, but not England, warrants future studies to investigate explanations for this cross-national difference, such as differences in healthcare systems and treatment. Implications for Cancer Survivors Results can generate hypotheses to identify contextual risk factors to improve cognitive aging of cancer survivors.
Westrick et al. (Sat,) studied this question.