Greater perceived stress management skills and heightened brain metabolic activity in cortical and subcortical stress processing regions in metastatic breast cancer patients

Purpose Emotional distress and adversity can contribute to negative health outcomes in women with breast cancer. Individual differences in perceived stress management skills such as cognitive reframing and relaxation for coping with adversity have been shown to predict less distress and better psychological and physiological adaptation. Prior work shows that more distressed breast cancer patients reveal less metabolic activity in brain regions such as the insula, thalamus, ventromedial and lateral prefrontal cortices. This led us to pose the hypothesis that breast cancer patients with greater stress management skills (e.g., ability to reframe stressors and use relaxation) may conversely show greater activation in these brain regions and thereby identify brain activity that may be modifiable through stress management interventions. The main objective of this study was to examine the association of perceived stress management skill efficacy with the metabolism of 9 key stress-implicated brain regions in women diagnosed with metastatic breast cancer. Methods Sixty women (mean age 59.86 ± 10.04) with a diagnosis of mBC underwent 18 F-fluorodeoxyglucose positron emission tomography. Perceived stress management skill efficacy was assessed with the Measure of Current Status Scale. Results Greater perceived stress management skill efficacy related significantly to higher metabolic activity in the insula, thalamus, ventromedial and lateral prefrontal cortices, and basal ganglia; this network of regions overlaps with those previously shown to be under-activated with greater level of distress in this same sample of metastatic breast cancer patients. Conclusion This is the first study to demonstrate in metastatic cancer patients that greater perceptions of stress management skill efficacy are associated with metabolic activity in key brain regions and paves the way for future studies tracking neural mechanisms sensitive to change following stress management interventions for this population.