PLoS ONE (Jan 2022)

Risk factors of SARS-CoV-2 infection in cancer patients pre- and post-vaccination.

  • Suliman A Alsagaby,
  • Naif Khalaf Alharbi,
  • Fahad A Alhumaydhi,
  • Faisal Alsubaie,
  • Mohammad Bosaeed,
  • Abdulrhman Aljouie,
  • Abdullah M Assiri,
  • Kanan Alshammari

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0272869
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 17, no. 8
p. e0272869

Abstract

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BackgroundSevere complications from COVID-19 and poor responses to SARS-CoV-2 vaccination were commonly reported in cancer patients compared to those without cancer. Therefore, the identification of predisposing factors to SARS-CoV-2 infection in cancer patients would assist in the prevention of COVID-19 and improve vaccination strategies. The literature lacks reports on this topic from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA). Therefore, we studied clinical and laboratory data of 139 cancer patients from King Abdulaziz Medical City, Riyadh, KSA.MethodsThe cancer patients fall into three categories; (i) uninfected with SARS-CoV-2 pre-vaccination and remained uninfected post-vaccination (control group; n = 114; 81%), (ii) pre-vaccination infected group (n = 16; 11%), or (iii) post-vaccination infected group (n = 9; 6%). Next, the clinical and lab data of the three groups of patients were investigated.ResultsComorbidity factors like diabetes and hemodialysis were associated with the risk of infection in cancer patients before the vaccination (pConclusionCollectively, this is the first study from KSA to report potential risk factors of SARS-CoV-2 infection in cancer patients pre- and post-vaccination. Further investigations on these risk factors in a larger cohort are worthwhile to draw a definitive conclusion about their roles in predisposing cancer patients to the infection.