Racial and ethnic disparities among patients with breast cancer and COVID-19

ABSTRACT

Background: Racial/ethnic minorities have disproportionately increased risk of contracting COVID-19 and experiencing severe illness;they also have worse breast cancer (BC) outcomes. COVID-19 outcomes among racial/ethnic minorities with BC are currently unknown. We sought to compare clinicopathologic characteristics and COVID-19 outcomes stratified by race/ethnicity. Methods: The COVID-19 and Cancer Consortium registry (NCT04354701) was used to identify patients with invasive BC and laboratory-confirmed SARS-CoV-2 diagnosed in the U.S. between 2020-03-06 and 2021-02-04. The primary analysis was restricted to women who selfidentified as non-Hispanic White (NHW), nonHispanic Black (NHB), or Hispanic (H). Demographic, cancer characteristics, and COVID-19 outcomes were evaluated. COVID-19 outcomes included hospital admission, intensive care unit (ICU) admission, mechanical ventilation, death within 30 days of COVID-19 diagnosis and death from any cause during follow-up. Descriptive statistics were used to compare clinicopathologic characteristics and Fisher exact tests were used to compare COVID19 outcomes across the 3 racial/ethnic groups. Results: A total of 1133 patients were identified of which 1111 (98%) were women;of which 575 (52%) NHW, 243 (22%) NHB, 183 (16%) H, and 110 (10%) other/unknown. Baseline characteristics differed among racial/ethnic groups. H were younger (median age NHW 63y;NHB 62y;H 54y) and more likely to be never smokers (NHW 62%;NHB 62%;H 78%). NHB had higher rates of obesity (NHW 40%;NHB 54%;H 46%), diabetes (NHW 16 %;NHB 32%;H 20%) and combined moderate and severe baseline COVID-19 at presentation (NHW 28%;NHB 42%;H 28%). Cancer characteristics are as shown (Table). Significant differences were observed in outcomes across racial/ethnic groups including higher rates of hospital admission (NHW 34%;NHB 49%;H 34%;P <0.001), mechanical ventilation (NHW 3%;NHB 9%;H 5%;P=0.002), 30-day mortality (NHW 6%;NHB 9%;H 4%;P=0.043) and total mortality (NHW 8%;NHB 12%;H 5%;P=0.05) among NHB compared to NHW and H. Conclusions: This is the largest study to show significant differences in COVID-19 outcomes by racial/ethnic groups of women with BC. The adverse outcomes in NHB could be due to higher moderate to severe COVID-19 at presentation and preexisting comorbidities. H did not have worse outcomes despite having more active disease and recent anti-cancer therapy, including with cytotoxic chemotherapy - potentially due to younger age and nonsmoking status. (Table Presented).