Department of Radiation Oncology, Imam Hossein Hospital, Shaheed Beheshti Medical University, Tehran, Iran.
Cancer Research Center, Shaheed Beheshti Medical University, Tehran, Iran.
Sci Rep. 2021 Dec 2;11(1):23294. doi: 10.1038/s41598-021-02692-3.
Cancer patients are at risk for severe complications or death from COVID-19 infection. Therefore, the need for routine COVID-19 testing in this population was evaluated. Between 1st August and 30th October 2020, 150 cancer patients were included. Symptoms of COVID-19 infection were evaluated. All eligible individuals went through RT-PCR and serological tests for COVID-19. At the same time, 920 non-cancer patients were recruited from a random sample of individuals who were subject to routine molecular and anti-body screening tests. Of 150 cancer patients, 7 (4.7%) were RT-PCR positive. Comorbidity made a significant difference in the RT-PCR positivity of cancer patients, 71.4% positive versus 25.8% negative (P-value = 0.02). The average age for negative and positive groups was 53.3 and 58.2 respectively (P-value = 0.01). No significant difference was observed between cancer and non-cancer patients regarding COVID-19 antibody tests. However, cancer patients were 3 times less likely to have a positive RT-PCR test result OR = 0.33 (CI: 0.15-0.73). The probability of cancer patients having a positive routine test was significantly lower than non-cancer patients, and the concept that all cancer patients should be routinely tested for COVID-19 may be incorrect. Nevertheless, there may be a subgroup of patients with comorbidities or older age who may benefit from routine COVID-19 testing. Importantly, these results could not be subjected to multivariate analysis.
癌症患者感染 COVID-19 后有发生严重并发症或死亡的风险。因此，评估了该人群常规 COVID-19 检测的必要性。2020 年 8 月 1 日至 10 月 30 日期间，纳入了 150 例癌症患者。评估了 COVID-19 感染的症状。所有符合条件的个体都接受了 COVID-19 的 RT-PCR 和血清学检测。同时，从接受常规分子和抗体筛查测试的个体中随机抽取 920 名非癌症患者作为对照。在 150 例癌症患者中，有 7 例（4.7%）RT-PCR 阳性。合并症使癌症患者的 RT-PCR 阳性率存在显著差异，71.4%阳性与 25.8%阴性（P 值=0.02）。阴性和阳性组的平均年龄分别为 53.3 和 58.2（P 值=0.01）。癌症和非癌症患者之间的 COVID-19 抗体检测无显著差异。然而，癌症患者的 RT-PCR 检测结果阳性的可能性低 3 倍，OR=0.33（CI：0.15-0.73）。癌症患者进行常规检测的概率明显低于非癌症患者，并非所有癌症患者都应常规检测 COVID-19 的观点可能不正确。然而，可能存在合并症或年龄较大的亚组患者从常规 COVID-19 检测中获益。重要的是，这些结果不能进行多变量分析。
