Wednesday, December 29, 2021
Are Follicular Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma Patients Finally Getting Newer, Better Options to Treat Their Cancer?
Tuesday, November 9, 2021
New Study: COVID-19 Breakthrough Cases Can Be A Serious Threat to Blood Cancer Patients, Including Me
As a journalist and three-time survivor of stage IV non-Hodgkin's lymphoma who is "immunocompromised," according to my oncologist, I've been reporting on the heightened threat that Covid-19 poses for lymphoma patients with great interest, and admittedly some anxiety.
As they say, denial ain't just a river in Egypt. I can neither run nor hide from the fact that there are now multiple studies worldwide showing that people with lymphoma and other blood cancers are at a substantially higher risk than healthy individuals for severe and life-threatening COVID-19 illness, and research suggests that lymphoma patients don't always achieve optimal protection from vaccination.
A new American Society of Hematology Blood study, the first to report on post-vaccination COVID-19 cases in patients with blood cancer, offers preliminary findings about the incidence of so-called "breakthrough infection" among my fellow blood cancer patients.
Breakthrough infection refers to people who are fully vaccinated but still get Covid-19.
The study drew data from an open online registry, EPICOVIDEHA, which collects reports of patients with blood cancers who developed COVID-19 infection.
As of August 31, out of the 4,000 total cases in the registry, there were 113 reported cases of COVID-19 occurring after vaccination.
More than three out of four of these breakthrough cases occurred in patients who were fully vaccinated with either the AstraZeneca vaccine or the mRNA vaccines such as Moderna or Pfizer.
Approximately 23% had been partially vaccinated, receiving just one dose of an mRNA vaccine, when they became infected with COVID-19.
Within the group of breakthrough cases, 79 patients experienced severe or critical COVID-19 infection, with 75 needing to be hospitalized.
After a follow-up of 30 days post-COVID-19 diagnosis, 14 (12.4%) patients died, and COVID-19 was deemed the cause of death for all but one of those individuals.
The study researchers emphasize that although the mortality rate in patients with breakthrough COVID-19 cases was high, it was still much lower than before vaccines were available.
In an interview with The Reno Dispatch, study author Livio Pagano (right), MD, of the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore in Italy, told me, “Vaccines have significantly lowered the overall mortality rate in our patients with hematologic malignancies. Still, some patients are not showing a full protective response from vaccination, so it is important that we understand which patients are more susceptible to breakthrough infection so we can investigate how to protect them.”
This gives me some comfort, if not a lot.
As for why lymphomas are harder hit by COVID-19 breakthrough cases, Pagano explained, “The majority of patients who do not respond to vaccination are those with lympho-proliferative disease such as lymphomas and multiple myeloma."
Pagano said these patients are often immunocompromised due to altered functionality of lymphocytes -- both from the underlying malignancy and the chemo-immune treatments -- so they do not always receive optimal protection from the vaccines.
"These patients appear to be more vulnerable to breakthrough COVID-19 infection," he said. "Patients with lymphomas are advised, even after getting the vaccine, to continue supportive measures such as wearing masks, washing hands, and reducing physical contact with other people.”
Previous studies using the registry’s data reported that during the pre-vaccination period of the pandemic, people with blood cancers and COVID-19 had mortality rates ranging from 30% to 50% (depending on type of underlying blood cancer).
“Before vaccination, if our patients with hematologic malignancies [blood cancers] developed COVID-19, they died in a lot of cases,” Pagano said in a press statement.
“With these preliminary data, we showed that vaccination is not able to completely protect, but surely it has a strong role in reducing the mortality for COVID-19 for people with blood cancers.”
The study also found that the level of COVID-19 vaccine response was associated with the type of underlying blood cancer.
People with myeloproliferative disorders (disorders of red blood cells and platelets) were the least likely to develop COVID-19 after vaccination, and people with lymphoproliferative disorders (disorders of lymphocytes, the white blood cells of the immune system) were the most likely.
Of the 113 breakthrough COVID-19 cases, 80% occurred in people with lymphoproliferative conditions such as chronic lymphocytic leukemia, non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, Hodgkin's lymphoma, and multiple myeloma.
“Unfortunately, people with lymphomas are more likely to have suppressed immune systems and to develop infections, and it is no different for COVID-19,” said Dr. Pagano.
“In future studies we will look at the efficacy of additional vaccine doses to understand if they can reduce infection in our patients, especially those with lymphoproliferative disorders.”
The type of COVID-19 vaccine did not affect the risk of breakthrough cases.
Approximately 70% of the patients in this study received an mRNA vaccine such as the Moderna or Pfizer vaccine, and the remaining patients received the AstraZeneca vector-based vaccine or the Sinovac inactivated vaccine.
There was no significant difference in the prevention of COVID-19 between these two groups.
“The key message is that we must make a great effort to vaccinate as many people as we can,” said Pagano.
“We can’t only vaccinate our patients with hematologic malignancies; it is also important to vaccinate their caregivers so we can form a barrier of protection around them, because their own immunity from the vaccine is not enough.”
These are important facts that we all deserve and need to know. But they are sometimes hard for me to read and even harder to acknowledge.
Saturday, November 6, 2021
Good Friday! Joe Biden's Best Day In Office
Despite the fact that it's early November, yesterday must have felt like Good Friday for President Joe Biden. Our allegedly sleepy President was wide awake and enjoying easily his best day in office.
Among the gifts in Biden’s seven-month late Easter basket: An excellent jobs report that left Republicans mumbling, and the overdue passage of a historic $1 trillion piece of legislation that will provide hundreds of billions to fix our roads, bridges, pipes, green energy and more, and create many jobs. His predecessor of course never got that done.
Monday, November 1, 2021
Historic China Lymphoma Project Is About to Take Flight
Lymphoma expert Dr. Jonathan Schatz (left), myself, and cancer researcher Dr. Zhizhong Li |
That has changed, as I predicted it would. China is now enjoying a biotech boom, especially with regard to blood cancer awareness and treatments and clinical trials, largely thanks to the companies I named above.
When I started this, many people in China who received a lymphoma diagnosis just went home and gave up. The awareness of this type of cancer was just not widespread. Many believed it was a death sentence.
A Global Gathering in La Jolla
This ebook will of course be FREE to China's lymphoma patients, and will be of course available in both Simplified Chinese and English.
Our project now resonates with an increasingly broad audience worldwide. With all the social media, etc., it makes more sense than ever. We now expect this positive initiative to fly after a few starts and stops.
Hua Liu, Consul of Science & Technology, Photos by Caitlin Prenga |
Typically, he said, pathologists in China were not specialists, they covered all diagnoses, not specific types of cancer. This, too, is changing as more hospitals learn about blood cancers and have access to new treatments and clinical trials.
Yours truly (left) and Dr. Jinghong Li |
Founder and Director
The China Lymphoma Project
Saturday, October 30, 2021
Oingo Boingo Lives!
Many Original Members of Quirky, Angry, Funny, Edgy, Underrated 80's Band Return!
If you attended college in Southern California in the early-to-mid 1980's, you must remember Oingo Boingo, the quirky, hard-rocking band whose concerts were dance-and-sweat events.
As a child of the 1970's, well, I had never seen or heard anything quite like them. I wasn't sure what to make of the band at first. But they grew on me.