Recent research shows that chemotherapy can leave behind changes in healthy cells that may affect a person’s health years after treatment.
A 3-year-old cancer patient’s blood cells showed the genetic wear of an 80-year-old after chemotherapy, highlighting new evidence that life-saving drugs leave lasting damage in healthy cells—a change that can persist for a lifetime.
Chemotherapy can permanently damage the DNA of healthy blood cells, causing them to age prematurely and potentially increasing patients’ risk of developing secondary cancers decades later, recent research shows.
