Weddings, travel plans,
music festivals, graduations,
dental cleanings,
pretty much everything has gotten put on hold
during the COVID-19 pandemic.
That includes health care
stuff like preventative medical care has gotten pushed to the back seat
as the virus has taken the wheel.
So what have these delays
meant for overall health,
especially when it comes to something
like cancer?
For some context,
my partner at the time was diagnosed
with lymphoma in early 2019.
This is pre-pandemic.
We spent about six months
basically living in the hospital,
and after that experience, all I could think about during
the pandemic was how much harder
that all would have been if we'd had to go through it
during COVID-19,
especially at the beginning,
at the point of diagnosis. Because it was difficult enough
to get seen by a doctor in pre-pandemic times.
But regular checkups and cancer screenings
drastically dipped during the early months of the pandemic,
as health care systems contended with the virus
and folks wanted to avoid high
risk locations like hospitals.
-What oncologists
worry about is that these delays in screening
will cause more patients
to be diagnosed at later stages,
where treatment is more difficult
and complicated and potentially
takes more away from a patient's quality of life.
-And the area of
sharpest decline in cancer screenings
was for women from underserved
communities where COVID-19 already
has an outsized impact.
And that's on top of an existing information gap
that has always been there.
Like, many people don't actually know how often
they should be screened for things like breast and cervical cancer.
And this knowledge is even less
common in communities of color.
And that's really concerning.
-One of the reasons that mortality from cancer
has been declining in the United States is because we've been
continuously improving some of our cancer screenings.
The best example of this is in cervical cancer.
Once widespread pap smear screening
became available in the United States,
cervical cancer went from being one of the leading
causes of death in women
to a relatively rare disease.
Recent studies
show that some cancer screenings,
but not all and not in all places,
have bounced back to pre-pandemic levels. And catching any cancer
early is absolutely essential to ensure a better outcome for the patient.
But it's especially true in the time of COVID.
And especially true
for those who have a blood cancer like leukemia or lymphoma.
And this is because those diseases
actually don't have screening options like a mammogram
for breast cancer or a pap smear for cervical cancer.
You just have to go to the doctor
if something doesn't feel right.
Plus, these cancers
impact the white blood cells.
-The white blood cells fight
all pathogens, bacteria, funguses, viruses,
anything that can attack your body and make you sick.
When you are a patient with leukemia or lymphoma,
both the disease itself
and the treatment can impact
the number and function of those white blood cells.
-Recent research
has shown that those with blood cancer in particular,
are at much higher risk of longer and more severe COVID-19
illness than people with a kind of cancer
that presents with solid tumors.
-The B lymphocytes are the exact cells
that are able to produce the proteins
we call the antibodies in response to infection.
So patients who either the malignancy itself
involves those cells
or the treatment for the malignancy knocks down those cells
are less able to make the antibodies
both to primary infection
or when they get an immunization.
-So what does this mean for blood cancer patients
when it comes to getting the COVID-19 vaccine?
Luckily, researchers have been studying exactly this.
Several studies have found that even
in immunosuppressed cancer patients
an mRNA vaccine can produce
at least some antibody response, just not one
as strong as we'd see in someone with a healthy immune system.
In a study from The Leukemia
and Lymphoma Society of more than 1,400 blood cancer patients,
there were some who,
depending on their cancer type,
were less likely to produce antibodies
in response to a full mRNA vaccine course.
But this research has been extended to look at a small number
of those patients who went on to get a booster shot.
And there's good news here.
-We were able to show
that almost half
of these patients, albeit small numbers
who were seronegative, or didn't make the antibodies
before, half of them
got a boost and were able to make antibodies from a third shot.
-But at this already complex intersection
of cancer care and COVID immunization,
health inequalities across
class, race and ethnicity,
and gender need to be taken into consideration too.
Like who has access to cancer care,
who has access to the vaccine,
who is able to get their cancer
diagnosed and treated in time?
And how does social identity play a role in all of this?
-Women tend to have a different immune system than men.
There are different receptors
that are targeted by various
immuno-oncology agents,
which are newer ways of treating cancer.
These drugs have been very, very successful
in treating certain malignancies.
But because women have an overall stronger
immune system than men,
men get more of an advantage
from these drugs than women do.
And so we are still trying to understand
all these differences between the immune systems of men and women
and how they interact in cancer
care to lead to differences in outcomes.
-So like always, we need more research.
And the National Cancer Institute
is conducting a study of 2,000
cancer patients who have contracted COVID-19
and is following them over the course
of two years to monitor their COVID immunity
during their cancer treatment and recovery.
Another study will be looking
at how COVID-19 susceptibility and immunity changes
in cancer patients, depending on the stage of their disease.
And work like this is how the medical community is able
to give solid, science-backed
advice to cancer patients on how to navigate things
like the COVID-19 pandemic
and vaccination as safely as possible.
There's so much noise out there about what's healthy
and what's not, what you should do and what you shouldn't,
which makes it all the more essential and empowering
to have access to solid,
credible information.
-And I really, really believe
that clinical trials are the path forward
for helping keep cancer patients safe.
I really want to thank
the now almost 12,000 patients
who agreed to be part of this registry
because we could not have done this
without patients saying,
'I want to help myself, but I want to help other people.'
If you are someone you know is looking for support when dealing with
blood cancer, then check out The Leukemia and Lymphoma Society.
They provide patients with free
one-on-one support and opportunities to speak
with highly trained oncology professionals.
So to learn more about them,
check out the resources we've left in the description below.
Thank you all so much for
watching Seeker's Body Language.
If you have another topic like this you want us to cover in this series,
then let us know in the comments and I'll see you next time.