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Course: Immune Responses to SARS-CoV-2 Among Patients With Cancer: What Can Seropositivity Tell Us?

CME Credits: 1.00

Released: 2021-05-28

Patients with cancer are at risk for immune dysregulation related to underlying malignant disease as well as receipt of immunomodulatory cancer therapy. A notable concern is that patients with cancer may not mount a robust protective immune response to SARS-CoV-2 infection or vaccination. This risk seems most pronounced in patients with hematologic cancers: in a study of 167 patients with chronic lymphocytic leukemia in Israel who had received both doses of the BNT162b2 messenger RNA (mRNA) vaccine (Pfizer-BioNTech) for COVID-19, only 39.5% had a positive antibody response, and this proportion was even lower (16%) among patients on active treatment. Patients with solid malignant neoplasms may have a more preserved immune response—of 261 patients with cancer in New York City who had tested positive for SARS-CoV-2, the rate of seroconversion was 94.5% for those with solid tumors compared with 81.7% with hematologic cancers.


Educational Objective
To identify the key insights or developments described in this article


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