Adverse Childhood Experiences, Adaptation and Breast Cancer (CAPONE)

University of Lorraine

Status: Completed

Conditions: Attachment Styles; Resilience, Psychological; Quality of Life; Cancer, Breast; Adverse Childhood Experiences; Epigenesis, Genetic

Treatments: Genetic: Biological and epigenetic measures

Study type: Observational

Funder types: Other

Identifiers

NCT05843539

2021-A02850-36

Details and patient eligibility

About

Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) have long been linked to mental health problems in adulthood. In the case of cancer, no study has considered that such an anteriority could make patients more vulnerable emotionally, even though the presence of reactionary disorders such as stress, anxiety or depression are characteristic of such a pathology. Activated during periods of stress and therefore during the illness, even the attachment system is mobilized and must be considered to allow more understanding of the illness experience. The attachment style can be seen here as an individual dimension that plays a role in the emotional regulation and resilience of patients. It is also particularly solicited during the remission phase, a complex and singular period of cancer disease that confronts patients with an ambivalence of hope and fear. The fear of recurrence is a concern that the cancer may return or progress in the same organ or in another part of the body. This is a determining factor in the occurrence of anxiety-depressive disorders. Finally, several studies have shown a strong association between depression/anxiety and Cancer-Related Fatigue (CRF) after treatment, especially during the remission phase.

ACEs leave physiological and epigenetic impact that can nowadays be easily evaluated, thus providing additional evidence between adversity, physiological and epigenetic vulnerability and the ability to adapt to life's challenges such as cancer. Life history changes are mediated by changes in cellular mechanisms affecting genome expression. It is currently widely demonstrated that ACEs increases epigenetic modifications.

The interest of this project is therefore to highlight the psychological consequences related to the occurrence of cancer in the developmental history (in terms of adversities) of patients who have completed adjuvant chemotherapy for breast cancer, taking into account the patients' previous attachments, resilience, fear of recurrence and perceived fatigue in order to consider their interactions and their effects on their psychological health and ultimately on their quality of life.

Enrollment: 100 patients

Sex: Female

Ages: 18+ years old

Volunteers: No Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

• Have had breast cancer
• Be considered in remission
• Be over 18 years of age
• Literate (able to understand the information and complete the questionnaire independently)
• Agree to participate in the project and sign the informed consent form

Exclusion criteria

• Be a person subject to a legal protection measure
• Be a protected adult, under guardianship or curators
• Be undergoing oncological treatment
• Have a lack of autonomy making it impossible to complete the questionnaire online
• Have had or have begun psychotherapeutic treatment