Cancer treatments do not impair COVID-19 survival — study

Powerful cancer therapies do not increase the risk of death for cancer patients with COVID-19, according to research based on data from the UK Coronavirus Cancer Monitoring Project.

Researchers looked at 2,515 adults with COVID-19 who were receiving - or had recently received - systemic cancer treatments such as chemotherapy, immunotherapy, hormonal therapy, or certain targeted drugs.

Within a week after COVID-19 diagnosis, 38% of the patients had died. Half the patients in the study were older than 72.

Overall, patients with lung cancer or blood cancers were at higher risk for death.

Chemotherapy, however, did not affect patients' risk of death from the virus, and immunotherapy actually improved the odds of survival, according to a report published on Monday in JAMA Network Open.

Earlier studies of COVID-19 patients have found that those with cancer have poorer outcomes, but that may be due to "age, sex, comorbidities, and cancer subtype rather than anticancer treatments," the research team concluded. -- Reuters