The hypothalamus is a neuroendocrine structure in the brain and one of the main regulators of our body. Children treated for a brain tumor are at risk of damage to the hypothalamus.
When the hypothalamus is damaged, a child develops not only "hormonal" disorders but also "non-hormonal" disorders, such as dysregulation of body temperature, day-night rhythms, energy balance and behavior. Therefore, they often have a poor quality of life with chronic fatigue, continuous hunger, obesity, and disinhibited behavior.
The symptoms of "non-hormonal" hypothalamic disorders often have remained unrecognized. As a result, we do not know exactly how often and to what extent hypothalamic disorders occur in children after treatment for a brain tumor. For this reason, a new hypothalamic score was recently developed with the aim of making hypothalamic dysfunction easier to recognize and systematically assess.
Treatment with radiation (radiotherapy) on the head can probably cause damage to the hypothalamus. Previously, no agreement has been reached among European radiation oncologists on the effects of radiation on the hypothalamus. However, this is incredibly important to know because radiotherapy is one of the most important methods of treatment for children with brain tumors.
In this study, we will summon all brain tumor survivors who received treatment from 2005-2020 and are at risk for hypothalamic damage to the LATER outpatient clinic and systematically test for hypothalamic damage. Signs of hypothalamic damage we will correlate with the radiation given at the time. In addition, we want to better understand the relationship between hypothalamic damage and neuro-cognitive impairment after radiation therapy. Therefore, in addition to scoring hypothalamic damage, we will also conduct neurocognitive research. With this study, we hope to form the basis for more refined radiotherapy planning with the goal of preventing/reducing the risk of hypothalamic damage and improving quality of life.
Supervisors: Leontien Kremer, Hanneke van Santen, Marita Partanen & Geert Janssens