Cancer Treatment Today

In as far as the risk of Covid after a cancer-free stat had benna chieved, In the UK study, researchers from the University of Birmingham and the University of Oxford observed 800 patients enrolled in the UK Coronavirus Cancer Monitoring Project, which provides real-time reports to frontline clinicians about the effects of COVID-19 on patients who have cancer.

The primary end point of the prospective study, conducted from Mar 18 to Apr 26, was all-cause mortality or discharge from the hospital. The researchers were particularly interested in how patients receiving anticancer treatment have been affected.

Of the 800 patients studied, 412 (52%) had mild COVID-19 illness, 96 (12%) did not require hospitalization, 315 (39%) required oxygen, and 53 (7%) received intensive care. A total of 226 patients (28%) died, with the vast majority (211, 93%) dying from COVID-19. Multivariable logistic regression analysis showed that risk of death was significantly associated with advancing patient age (OR, 9.42; 95% CI, 6.56 to 10.02), being male (OR, 1.67; 95% CI, 1.19 to 2.34), and the presence of other comorbidities such as hypertension (OR, 1.95; 95% CI, 1.36 to 2.80) and cardiovascular disease (OR, 2.32; 95% CI, 1.47 to 3.64).

A univariate analysis found that, compared with patients who had not received chemotherapy within 4 weeks of testing positive for COVID-19, those who had received recent chemotherapy did not have a higher death rate (29% with recent chemotherapy vs 27% without recent chemotherapy). A multivariate analysis of 281 of patients who had received recent chemotherapy, after adjusting for age, gender, and comorbidities, found that chemotherapy had no significant effect on mortality (OR, 1.18; 95% CI, 0.81 to 1.72).

Multivariate analysis also found that, compared with patients who were not on these therapies, patients on immunotherapy (OR, 0.59; 0.27 to 1.27), hormonal therapy (OR, 0.90; 95% CI, 0.49 to 1.68), radiotherapy (OR, 0.65; 95% CI, 0.36 to 1.18), or targeted therapies (OR, 0.83; 95% CI, 0.45 to 1.54) were not at any additional risk of death.

The authors of the study said their takeaway from these findings is that anticancer treatments should not necessarily be withheld in COVID-19 patients.

“In patients presenting to UK National Health Service trusts or cancer centres, our data are strongly indicative that cancer plus COVID-19 mortality is principally driven by advancing age and the presence of other non-cancer comorbidities,” they wrote. “We concluded that withholding effective cancer treatments from many cancer patients during the pandemic runs the very real risk of increasing cancer morbidity and mortality, perhaps much more so than COVID-19 itself.” (https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2020/05/studies-highlight-covid-19-impact-cancer-patients)