Immune depleting cancer therapy poses highest risk of dying from COVID-19

Trisha Wise-Draper, MD, PhD, in her lab in
the Vontz Center for Molecular Studies.
Photo credit/Colleen Kelley/UC Creative + Brand

CANCER DIGEST – Sept. 26, 2020 – Researchers have known from the earliest phase of the COVID-19 pandemic that cancer patients were at greater risk of dying from the virus. A new study shows that cancer patients who have recently undergone a certain type of cancer treatment within one to three months prior to infection were at the highest risk of dying of the virus.
The study of 3,600 patients analyzed from 122 institutions across the US found that 30-day mortality was highest among patients recently treated with the chemotherapy/immunotherapy combination regimen, and was especially high among those receiving the immunotherapy that targets CD20 monoclonal antibodies. Such anti-CD20 antibodies aim to deplete abnormal B cell lymphomas.

The findings were presented at the European Society for Medical Oncology Virtual Congress 2020 by researchers led by Trisha Wise-Draper, MD, associate professor of medicine at the University of Cincinnati.

"Any way you slice it, this is not good news for patients who are fighting cancer," she says. "Targeted therapies, especially those causing immune cell depletion, used one to three months before [the diagnosis of] COVID-19, are associated with very high mortality, up to 50%," she said in a press release.

She added that the new study shows that chemo-immunotherapy combinations and immune-depleting drugs, but not immunotherapy alone, may lead to worse outcomes.

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Source: University of Cincinnati News