Cancer Patients Particularly Vulnerable to Lack of COVID Vax Response

(MedPageToday) Cancer patients vaccinated against COVID-19 had a significantly higher rate of negative antibody tests as compared with a vaccinated control population, greatly increasing the odds for breakthrough infection and hospitalization, a large British study showed. Among people who had received two doses of COVID-19 vaccine, 4.68% of 4,249 tests for patients with cancer had undetectable antibody levels vs 0.13% of 279,721 tests for the control population (P<0.001). Patients with leukemia and lymphoma, with stage IV cancer, and those receiving systemic therapy appeared to be most likely to mount a poor vaccine antibody response.