COVID-19: An Unlikely cure of Cancer? ‎

Abstract

No abstract.

Conflicts of interest:‎

The authors have no conflict of interest to declare.‎

Funding:

No funding.

Author contributions:

This letter was conceptualized by AI and FM. FN and AI have contributed to the literature review and AI and FM have drafted the manuscript. All authors have contributed to revisions.     

Full Text

COVID-19 is a highly transmissible upper respiratory tract illness caused by the Severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS-CoV2) virus, which originated from Wuhan, China, and has spread throughout the globe in no time prompting WHO to declare it as a pandemic in March 2020, since its beginning it has caused loads of causalities around the globe via its primitive and new mutated forms or versions and has disrupted normal life (1).  Along with normal life, the paradigm of hospitals has been affected too where numerous operations and methods of treatment of various diseases have been reassessed before they can be proceeded or treated, people who are most vulnerable and at utmost risk of getting severely affected by COVID-19 are those who are suffering from Malignant neoplasms since they are immunocompromised or those who are taking immunosuppressants such as corticosteroids  (2). But recent case reports have proven to be contradictory to the norm.

A case report reported that a 61 years old man suffering from stage 3 Hodgkin’s lymphoma, who had end-stage renal stage caught COVID-19 was found 4 months later to have reduced palpable lymphadenopathy and an interim PET/CT scan revealed widespread resolution of the lymphadenopathy and reduced metabolic uptake. EBV viral PCR had also fallen to 413 copies/ml (log10 2·62)(3). In another case report, an old age high-grade B-cell lymphoma patient received R-CHOP (rituximab, cyclophosphamide, vincristine, and prednisolone) treatment for lymphoma, where physicians did not predict a high chance of cure. After a while of the first cycle of R-CHOP, she was SARS-CoV-2 infected, and unexpectedly a complete metabolic response happened (4). Another study showed complete treatment of B-cell Chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) where CD19+/CD5+ B-lymphocyte clone disappeared from the peripheral blood of the patient after a COVID-19 course of disease (5).

 In another report, in patients with metastatic colorectal cancer, the COVID-19 course contributed to complete response with regression of hepatic lesions, reduction of the hepatic metastatic lesion, and reduction in peritoneal and lung metastasis lesions, respectively in 3 patients (6).  Another study reports two individuals with Metastatic Renal Cell Carcinoma whose therapy was postponed due to COVID-19 infection and who had sudden tumor regression after the SARS-CoV-2 infection (7). In a follicular lymphoma patient in the stage of end-of-treatment [18F]FDG-PET/CT, after the COVID-19 course, complete metabolic response with complete remission of follicular lymphoma happened (8).

Therefore, it would be wise to shed further light on this matter and look for the genetic machinery that COVID-19 might have triggered to cause this remission of cancer or any immune response that either cancer might have been triggered and in the future, an attenuated vaccine may be created which might help in targeting various other neoplasms and if not may prove useful in treating Hodgkin’s lymphoma which might save the patients from suffering from lung toxicity caused by Bleomycin (the normal treatment option for Hodgkin’s lymphoma).