Cancer and Covid
- A 47-year-old cancer survivor carried the novel coronavirus in her system for nearly an entire year, a new study released earlier this month has revealed.
- The woman carried the virus in her system for a total of 335 days the longest-ever documented case of Covid.
- As a cancer patient or survivor, how can you protect yourself from this virus? If you haven't already, get your Covid shot. And if you have received your shot, make sure you get your booster shot.
The woman, who has not been named, was previously diagnosed with type 2 diabetes mellitus and diffuse large B-cell lymphoma, a type of blood cancer. She had been in complete remission from her cancer for about three years when she presented with the typical Covid symptoms fever, headache, nasal congestion and productive cough. First hospitalized with the virus in the spring of last year, she repeatedly tested positive for Covid, completely stunning her doctors.
Read MoreThe Year-Long Covid Battle
The woman was hospitalized with Covid at the National Institutes of Health campus in Bethesda, Md., in the spring of 2020. And after 10 months, during which she exhibited mild or no symptoms of the virus, she was still testing positive for Covid.She was previously successfully treated for lymphoma with an aggressive form of treatment known as CAR-T cell therapy.
CAR-T therapy involves removing T cells from the body and training them to recognize cancer cells in a lab. This is done by genetically modifying the cells, and then growing them in large numbers. Once the T cells are back from the lab, you will first need treatment to prepare your body to receive the new, genetically modified T cells so your body doesn't reject them. Those cells are then infused back into the body, just like a blood transfusion. The treatment left her with few B cells, the cells that fight bacteria and viruses.
Since she kept testing positive for Covid after her first hospitalization, according to the study, her doctors thought these were just false positives, picking up on harmless leftover virus bits. But when her viral load again rose in March, doctors sequenced its genome and found that it was very similar to that of Covid she carried 10 months earlier.
She was treated and finally cleared the virus from her system after nearly a year. Science News reports that she has had multiple negative Covid tests since.
Cancer and Covid
Immunocompromised people, such as those who have or have had cancer, are more susceptible to Covid. As a cancer patient or survivor, how can you protect yourself from this virus that's still mutating and infecting thousands every day?
Here's the most important thing: If you haven't already, get your Covid shot. (And before you ask, yes, all Covid vaccines are safe for cancer patients and survivors.) If you have received your shot, make sure you get your booster shot.
According to Dr. Nina Shah, a hematologist at the University of California San Francisco, it's critical that cancer patients going through active treatment get this booster. "It's very important (to get your booster shot), since we know some cancer patients do not mount a sufficient immune response after the first series of shots," Dr. Shah tells SurvivorNet.
Cancer Patients & COVID-19 When to Stay Home and When to Go in to Your Doctor
If you're hesitant about the vaccine, recent findings presented at the annual European Society for Medical Oncology conference, or ESMO Congress 2021, the leading professional society for medical oncology, revealed through multiple studies that cancer patients have "an appropriate, protective immune response to vaccination without experiencing any more side-effects than the general population."
The findings discussed at the conference "offer conclusive evidence that while being largely effective, anti-COVID vaccination is just as safe for people with cancer as it is for the general population," according to Dr. Luis Castelo-Branco, a medical oncologist in the ESMO Scientific and Medical Division.
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