Up to half of cancer patients could develop covid longand the risk of that happening appears to be even greater for women than for men.
This is clear from the results of a study published in the scientific journal eLife which is based on data obtained at a prestigious cancer treatment center in the United States, the Texas University MD Anderson Cancer Center.
An unexplored profile
According to the authors of the study, there are currently limited data on the long covid in cancer patients and how it affects its progression, care and treatment. Therefore, they decided to characterize the specific patterns of this condition in this type of patients.
To do this, they identified patients receiving treatment at the aforementioned center who had received a covid diagnosis between the months of March and September 2020 and followed their progress for 14 months through a remote symptom monitoring and through your regular visits to the hospital.
The patients were asked to register symptoms such as fatigue, cough, chest tightness, shortness of breath, headache, fever, changes in taste or smell, muscle pain, gastrointestinal symptoms, sleep problems or any limitation in activities of daily living. Long covid was defined, in this context, as symptoms related to covid-19 lasting more than 30 days after diagnosis or the emergence of new symptoms related to covid-19.
More risk in men
In total, they collected data from 312 patients, of whom 188 (60%) developed long-term covid. Those who had relapsed or had cancer resistant to treatment at the start of the study or who had a more severe acute covid-19 infection had less likely of developing long covid. Female cancer patients had a higher rate of long covid than male patients (63% vs. 51%). Beyond that, there were no important differences in the characteristics of those who developed the chronic condition and those who did not.
Another notable finding is that patients with hypertension had less likely to develop long-term covid-19, despite the fact that this factor is known to increase the risk of more severe acute infection. This, however, is consistent with the results of other studies, including one carried out on immunocompromised patients.
References
Hiba Dagher, Anne-Marie Chaftari, Ishwaria M Subbiah, Alexandre E Malek, Ying Jiang, Peter Lamie, Bruno Granwehr, Teny John, Eduardo Yepez, Jovan Borjan, Cielito Reyes-Gibby, Mary Flores, Fareed Khawaja, Mala Pande, Noman Ali , Raniv Rojo, Daniel D Karp, Patrick Chaftari, Ray Hachem, Issam I Raad. Long COVID in cancer patients: preponderance of symptoms in majority of patients over long time period. eLife (2023). DOI: https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.81182