Cancer patients need booster doses to avoid serious cases of covid.

Patients with some types of cancer should receive a booster vaccine. maintain a sufficiently high level of immunization against covid to enable them to avoid, in most cases, serious complications or deaths as a result of infection with this coronavirus.

This is the main finding of a pioneering international study conducted by two Barcelona research centers and published in the journal Nature Communications. Their efforts provide health authorities with a scientific basis for including this type of patient among the particularly vulnerable groups for whom It is recommended that you receive a reminder every year about new variants of SARS-CoV-2.

Work done Barcelona Institute for Global Health (ISGlobal), a research center supported by the La Caixa Foundation and the Jordi Gol Research Institute for Primary Health Care. found that cancer patients who did not receive full initial immunization with an antiviral vaccine (double dose) had twice the mortality rate and rate of serious complications caused by viral infection compared to people with the same type of disease. that they actually got two punctures.

But the point that makes the study more innovative is the scientific confirmation that despite the benefits of first immunization among a group, it is an insufficient preventive measure as it puts these patients at serious risk if they are not updated and periodically re-equipped. their protection with antibodies against covid. “This work provides important information for understanding the impact of Covid vaccination on cancer patients and helps develop public health policies that protect this vulnerable population.”– summarizes Talita Duarte-Salles, one of those responsible for the investigation.

These experts tried to fill the gap in international research on the effectiveness of coronavirus vaccines., regarding the degree of protection of patients with tumor pathologies. Analyzes of this type of patient have been very limited, even though all medical evidence indicates that they are at greater risk for at least two deficiencies.

First of all, because these are people with highest risk of mortality from this infectious agent, especially in the case of patients with lung cancer, neoplasms of the blood system or many patients undergoing chemotherapy. Second, because research suggests that these patients may produce fewer protective antibodies against SARS-CoV-2 than the general population, especially after the first dose of the vaccine, both aspects are supported by this work.

Large sample

Two teams of researchers from Barcelona say this is the most complete and comprehensive work done to date on the subject, and the first to use real-world information from clinical follow-up of cancer patients during the pandemic and beyond. Experts analyzed clinical data to confirm their conclusions 184,744 patients with some type of cancer monitored by the Catalan primary health service, half of whom have received an initial full coronavirus vaccination and the other half have not.

The study also conducted two types of cross-validation of the data. On the one hand, they compared data on mortality and serious complications caused by coronavirus in cancer patients who received the full vaccine and those who did not receive the double shot. On the other hand, they compared the clinical evolution regarding Covid in those who received only the initial dose of the vaccine with the clinical evolution in the 54,267 patients in the sample who received a booster dose. “Our results clearly demonstrate that vaccination against Covid-19 significantly reduces mortality and serious complications among cancer patients, especially among those who received a booster vaccination.”– emphasizes Otavio Ranzani, responsible for research at ISGlobal.