ABSTRACT
Background: At present, the epidemic of the novel coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has quickly engulfed the world. Inflammatory cytokines are associated with the severity and outcomes of patients with COVID-19. However, the prognostic value of pro-inflammatory factors in cancer patients with COVID-19 are unknown. Methods: A multi-center, retrospective, cross-sectional study, based on five designated tertiary hospitals for the treatment of COVID-19 in Hubei Province, China. 112 cancer patients with COVID-19, and 105 COVID-19 patients without cancer were enrolled in the study between January 1st, 2020 and April 30th, 2020. The risk assessment of pro-inflammatory factors for disease severity and clinical adverse outcomes was identified by univariable and multivariable logistic regression models. Results: Of the 112 cancer patients with COVID-19, 40 (35.7%) patients were in critical condition and 18 (16.1%) patients died unfortunately. Univariate and multivariate analysis demonstrated that hemoglobin level and pro-inflammatory neutrophils and C-reactive protein (CRP), can be used as independent factors affecting the severity of COVID-19; Meanwhile, pro-inflammatory neutrophils and CRP can be used as an independent influencing factor for adverse clinical outcome of death. Moreover, the dynamic changes of neutrophils and CRP were also presented, and compared with COVID-19 patients without cancer, cancer patients with COVID-19 showed higher neutrophil counts and CRP levels. Conclusion: In cancer patients with COVID-19, the significant increase in pro-inflammatory neutrophils and CRP indicated a more critical illness and adverse clinical outcome, and pro-inflammatory neutrophils and CRP played a greater adverse role compare with COVID-19 patients without cancer, which may be the cause of critical illness and adverse clinical outcomes of cancer patients with COVID-19.
ABSTRACT
Since December 2019, a novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) has rapidly engulfed the world. Cancer patients infected with COVID-19 are considered to carry higher severity of the disease and higher mortality rate than common COVID-19 patients in previous studies. However, due to the poor clinical information on COVID-19 patients with cancer, the evidences that supported this conclusion are insufficient. At present, rather limited reports have analyzed the clinical data of breast cancer patients infected with COVID-19. Therefore, in this retrospective study, we described the clinical characteristics and the outcomes of 35 COVID-19 patients with breast cancer and compared 55 COVID-19 patients without cancer and 81 COVID-19 patients with other types of cancer as controls. Our data showed that there were no differences in disease severity and outcomes between the COVID-19 patients with breast cancer and the common COVID-19 patients, which was in contrast to previous studies. In addition, compared with other types of cancer patients, asymptomatic infections and mild cases among breast cancer patients made up a substantially larger proportion. Our results indicated that the clinical characteristics of breast cancer patients were milder than those of other types of cancer patients, but there were no significant differences in outcomes between the two groups.