A large prospective study of COVID-19 outcomes in people with a history of cancer has found that hospital mortality rates do not appear to have reduced over time, unlike those for people with no history of cancer.
The findings from the Clinical Characterisation Protocol (CCP) CANCER-UK study—which is led by Liverpool researchers in collaboration with colleagues in Edinburgh—are based on anonymised data from more than 195,000 people hospitalized in the UK, including more than 20,000 with a history of cancer, defined as either being on active treatment for cancer or having had a past diagnosis of cancer.
Data being presented at this year’s European Society of Medical Oncology (ESMO) conference shows that, although there has been a steady decline in mortality rates for people with no history of cancer since January 2020, the same is not true for people with a history of cancer.
Furthermore, the gap in mortality between people with a history of cancer and those with no history of cancer widened between February 2021 and July 2021.
The reasons for these results are not yet clear. Further data collection and work is ongoing to understand why mortality for people with a history of cancer who are hospitalized with COVID-19 has not changed over the course of the pandemic, unlike those with no history of cancer.
Professor Carlo Palmieri, from The Clatterbridge Cancer Centre and University of Liverpool, who is co-leading the study, said: “These data show clear trends in mortality. In people with no history of cancer, mortality for hospitalized patients has decreased since January 2020. For people with a history of cancer, however, no reduction in mortality over time was observed, with actual peaks seen across the last year.
“Most noticeably, while COVID-19-related deaths in people with no history of cancer have fallen sharply since January 2021, those for people with a history of cancer have risen.
“We don’t know as yet why we are not seeing an improvement in the mortality of patients hospitalized with COVID-19, and work is ongoing at speed to enable us to explain these results.”
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