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. 2021 Nov 2:13:17588359211053416.
doi: 10.1177/17588359211053416. eCollection 2021.

COVID-19 in breast cancer patients: a subanalysis of the OnCovid registry

Laia Garrigós  1 , Cristina Saura  2 , Clara Martinez-Vila  3 , Alberto Zambelli  4 , Mark Bower  5 , Barbara Pistilli  6 , Matteo Lambertini  7 , Diego Ottaviani  8 , Nikolaos Diamantis  9 , Ailsa Lumsden  10 , Sonia Pernas  11 , Daniele Generali  12 , Elia Seguí  13 , Gemma Viñas  14 , Eudald Felip  15 , Ana Sanchez  16 , Gianpiero Rizzo  17 , Armando Santoro  18 , Alessio Cortellini  19 , Ylenia Perone  20 , John Chester  20 , Maria Iglesias  21 , Marta Betti  22 , Bruno Vincenzi  23 , Michela Libertini  24 , Francesca Mazzoni  25 , Federica Zoratto  26 , Rossana Berardi  27 , Annalisa Guida  28 , Rachel Wuerstlein  29 , Angela Loizidou  30 , Rachel Sharkey  5 , Juan Aguilar Company  1 , Marta Matas  3 , Chiara Saggia  31 , Lorenzo Chiudinelli  4 , Emeline Colomba-Blameble  6 , Myria Galazi  8 , Uma Mukherjee  9 , Mieke Van Hemelrijck  10 , Mar Marin  32 , Carla Strina  12 , Aleix Prat  13 , Helena Pla  14 , Eva Maria Ciruelos  16 , Alexia Bertuzzi  18 , Lucia Del Mastro  33 , Giampiero Porzio  34 , Thomas Newsom-Davis  5 , Isabel Ruiz  35 , Maria Belen Delany  3 , Marco Krengli  36 , Vittoria Fotia  4 , Alessandro Viansone  6 , Neha Chopra  8 , Margarita Romeo  15 , Ramon Salazar  32 , Ignacio Perez  3 , Francesca d'Avanzo  31 , Michela Franchi  4 , Manuela Milani  12 , Fanny Pommeret  6 , Marco Tucci  37 , Paolo Pedrazzoli  17 , Nadia Harbeck  29 , Daniela Ferrante  38 , David J Pinato  39 , Alessandra Gennari  31
Affiliations

COVID-19 in breast cancer patients: a subanalysis of the OnCovid registry

Laia Garrigós et al. Ther Adv Med Oncol. .

Abstract

Background: Cancer patients are at higher risk of COVID-19 complications and mortality than the rest of the population. Breast cancer patients seem to have better prognosis when infected by SARS-CoV-2 than other cancer patients.

Methods: We report a subanalysis of the OnCovid study providing more detailed information in the breast cancer population.

Results: We included 495 breast cancer patients with a SARS-CoV-2 infection. Mean age was 62.6 years; 31.5% presented more than one comorbidity. The most frequent breast cancer subtype was luminal-like (n = 245, 49.5%) and 177 (35.8%) had metastatic disease. A total of 332 (67.1%) patients were receiving active treatment, with radical intent in 232 (47.6%) of them. Hospitalization rate was 58.2% and all-cause mortality rate was 20.3%. One hundred twenty-nine (26.1%) patients developed one COVID-19 complication, being acute respiratory failure the most common (n = 74, 15.0%). In the multivariable analysis, age older than 70 years, presence of COVID-19 complications, and metastatic disease were factors correlated with worse outcomes, while ongoing anticancer therapy at time of COVID-19 diagnosis appeared to be a protective factor. No particular oncological treatment was related to higher risk of complications. In the context of SARS-CoV-2 infection, 73 (18.3%) patients had some kind of modification on their oncologic treatment. At the first oncological reassessment (median time: 46.9 days ± 36.7), 255 (51.6%) patients reported to be fully recovered from the infection. There were 39 patients (7.9%) with long-term SARS-CoV-2-related complications.

Conclusion: In the context of COVID-19, our data confirm that breast cancer patients appear to have lower complications and mortality rate than expected in other cancer populations. Most breast cancer patients can be safely treated for their neoplasm during SARS-CoV-2 pandemic. Oncological treatment has no impact on the risk of SARS-CoV-2 complications, and, especially in the curative setting, the treatment should be modified as little as possible.

Keywords: COVID-19; COVID-19 outcomes; OnCovid; SARS-CoV-2; breast cancer.

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Conflict of interest statement

Conflict of interest statement: The authors declared the following potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: D.J. Pinato reports personal fees from BMS (travel fees, grant to institution, and lecture fees), Eisai (consultancy, lecture fees, and occasional advisory board), H3B (consultancy and occasional advisory board), Astrazeneca (consultancy and occasional advisory board), MiNa therapeutics (consultancy), Roche (lecture fees), Viiv Healthcare (lecture fees), Bayer Healthcare (lecture fees), and Falk Foundation (lecture fees). A. Zambelli reports personal fees from Lilly (occasional advisory board and travel fees), Novartis (occasional advisory board and travel fees), Pfizer (occasional advisory board), Astrazeneca (occasional advisory board), and Roche (occasional advisory board). M. Bower reports personal fees from Gilead (lecture fees), ViiV (lecture fees), BMS (lecture fees), MSD (lecture fees), and Janssen (lecture fees). M. Lambertini reports personal fees from Roche (consultancy and travel fees), Novartis (consultancy and travel fees), Lilly (consultancy and travel fees), Astrazeneca (consultancy), Pfizer (travel fees), Sandoz (travel fees), and Takeda (travel fees). E. Felip reports personal fees from Pfizer (grant to institution) and Instituto Carlos III (research grant). A. Cortellini reports personal fees from BMS (consultancy), MSD (consultancy), Astrazeneca (consultancy and lecture fees), Roche (consultancy), Astellas (lecture fees), and Novartis (Lecture fees). F. Mazzoni reports personal fees from Roche (lecture fees), Takeda (lecture fees), MSD (lecture fees), BMS (lecture fees), Lilly (lecture fees), and Boehringer (lecture fees). M. Romeo reports personal fees from MSD (consultancy), Pfizer (travel fees), and GSK (occasional advisory board). A. Gennari reports personal fees from Astrazeneca (lecture fees), Lilly (lecture fees), Eisai (lecture fees), Pfizer (lecture fees), Novartis (lecture fees), Teva (lecture fees), and Daiichi Sankyo (lecture fees).

Figures

Figure 1.
Figure 1.
Overall survival analysis
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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