COVID-19 Patients With This Comorbidity Have The Highest Risk Of Death

Patients battling cancer are more likely to die of COVID-19 than patients who survived cancer or those who have not been diagnosed with the illness, a study has found.

Individuals with active blood cancers have the highest risk of dying of the coronavirus, researchers have found. The study is led by Daniel Becker, MD, a medical oncologist at NYU Langone, and is published on Cancer, the peer-reviewed journal of the American Cancer Society.

"We completed a large chart review-based study of patients hospitalized with COVID-19 and found that patients with active cancer, but not a history of cancer, were more likely to die," Becker explained.

The team analyzed the records of 4,184 COVID-19 patients at the NYU Langone Medical Center, of which 233 had an active cancer diagnosis. Findings showed that patients who were battling cancer (34%) were more likely to die of COVID-19 than those who have a history of cancer (27.6%) or those who have not been diagnosed with it (20%), Eurekalert reported.

The risk is even higher for those with blood-related cancers, in particular, the researchers found. This means that patients with leukemia, myeloma, or lymphoma had the highest risk of dying from COVID-19 than the rest of the patients in the group.

The team went on to state that patients who received anti-cancer therapy at least three months prior to hospitalization are not at higher risk for death. These types of cancer therapy include chemotherapy, immunotherapy and other molecularly targeted therapies, as per WebMD.

"Among those hospitalized with active cancer and COVID-19, recent cancer therapy was not associated with worse outcomes," said Becker. In addition, no differences based on the types of cancer therapy received by the patients were found by the researchers.

Based on the study's discovery, Becker and his team emphasize the need for cancer patients to take precautions to prevent themselves from contracting the virus as well as continuing to take any cancer therapy they have been prescribed.

"People with active cancer should take precautions against getting COVID-19, including vaccination, but need not avoid therapy for cancer," Becker concluded.