COVID-19 Research Paper Volume 13, Issue 6 pp 7733—7744
Lymphocyte may be a reference index of the outcome of cancer patients with COVID-19
- 1 Department of Oncology, Tongji Hospital of Tongji Medical College, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, People's Republic of China
Received: December 18, 2020 Accepted: February 18, 2021 Published: March 18, 2021
https://doi.org/10.18632/aging.202741How to Cite
Copyright: © 2021 Zhang et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Abstract
Background: The novel coronavirus infectious disease (COVID-19) is an international concern as it spreads through human populations and across national and international borders.
Methods: In this retrospective study, we consecutively included all cancer patients who had been identified as having a nucleic acid-confirmed COVID-19 from two designated hospitals in Wuhan, China. COVID-19 patients without cancer were also enrolled for comparison. The clinical data were gathered from the medical records from Jan 14 to March 12, 2020.
Results: Among the 117 cancer patients diagnosed with COVID-19, the median age was 63 years and 48.7% were male. Male sex, hematologic cancer, dyspnea on admission, and anti-cancer therapies were associated with an increased risk of mortality in cancer patients with COVID-19. We found that elevated levels of TNF-α, IL-2R, IL-6, and IL-8 were associated with a poorer prognosis in cancer patients with COVID-19, but no statistically significant association was found in patients without cancer. In addition, IL-2R and IL-6 markedly decreased in cancer patients who recovered from COVID-19. However, lymphocyte subsets were diminished in cancer patients who died from COVID-19, including total T cells, total B cells, helper T (Th) cells and suppressor T (Ts) cells.
Conclusions: Cancer patients with COVID-19 were associated with high mortality (23.9%). A decrease in lymphocyte subsets and higher levels of cytokines were associated with a higher risk of severe outcome and could be utilized as the reference index to predict the survival outcome of cancer patients with COVID-19.