Crown after cancer

– The study can give us answers to some of the questions we have asked ourselves, including how cancer survivors who are infected with the coronavirus fare, says Secretary General Ingrid Stenstadvold Ross of the Cancer Society.

British researchers have studied a large group of people who have survived 20 common cancers and compared them to an even larger group of people who have not been affected by cancer.

Based on the findings of this study in EClinicalMedicine, published by the renowned The Lancet, researchers believe that those who have survived cancer are more likely to have a severe COVID-19 course than those who have not had cancer.

108,215 cancer survivors and a control group of 523,541 cancer-free people are included in the study, which has examined whether patients with well-diagnosed cancer are at increased risk of severe courses of the common influenza, which largely appears to be transferable. to coronavirus disease.

Nine times higher

The study is large and robust and is the first of its kind to investigate this.

However, it is a weakness that it has not yet been peer reviewed.

Researchers have found that cancer survivors have a wide range of underlying conditions that are known risk factors for severe COVID-19.

They have more diabetes, asthma, other respiratory diseases, heart diseases, neurological diseases, and kidney and liver diseases than people who have not had cancer.

In addition, researchers have found that people who have survived hematologic cancer, that is, blood cancer diseases, have a nine times greater risk of suffering severe outcomes from the flu. The increased risk may persist for more than ten years after cancer for this group.

For other types of cancer, the researchers found a double risk of hospitalization and, in the worst case, death from influenza.

For these cancer survivors, the increased risk can persist for up to five years.

– Interesting findings

– The study points to much of what we have believed from the beginning, at the same time that there are some interesting new findings. It shows that cancer patients are at increased risk of a severe course of the disease if they become infected with the coronavirus, and that some cancer diagnoses have a significantly higher risk than others, says the Secretary General of the Norwegian Cancer Society and elaborates:

– It is also interesting to see that the risk can still be higher up to ten years after finishing cancer treatment. At the same time, we see that age is the main cause of a severe course of coronavirus disease. Many cancer patients are older and have additional illnesses, so they are in the risk group for various reasons, says Ingrid Stenstadvold Ross.

She notes that when the pandemic struck, cancer patients were immediately seen as a vulnerable group.

– There are about 300,000 people in Norway who have or have had cancer, and fortunately good measures were taken to protect them. The fact that Norway has managed to keep infection rates low means we don’t have the same statistics as other countries on who and how the coronavirus hits the hardest. So it’s interesting to look to other countries to learn more, says Stenstadvold Ross.

There are currently no Norwegian figures, but the Norwegian Cancer Society has joined forces with the other cancer societies in the Nordic countries to fund a joint Nordic study on cancer and the crown.

– What can the knowledge of the new British study be used for?

– Knowledge can be particularly interesting in relation to priorities in the health care system and in relation to who should be prioritized when vaccination begins. No less important is the knowledge that may be important in preparing for a possible new pandemic in the future, says Stenstadvold Ross.