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Could COVID-19 induce remission of acute leukemia?

2021; Maney Publishing; Volume: 26; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/16078454.2021.1992117

1607-8454

Eman Z. Kandeel, Lobna Refaat, Raafat Abdelfatah, Mohamed Samra, Ahmed Bayoumi, Mona S. Abdellateif, Hend Abdel-Hady, Mohamed Ali, Medhat Khafagy,

Long-Term Effects of COVID-19

Background COVID-19 viral pandemic caused many mortalities in cancer patients especially those with hematological malignancies. The immunological response to COVID-19 infection is responsible for the outcome of cases whether mild, severe or critical.Case presentation Two cases presented with moderate COVID-19 viral infection, concomitant with acute myeloid leukemia and T acute lymphoblastic leukemia, respectively. Surprisingly, after the administration of COVID-19 supportive therapy, the cases showed disease remission after a follow-up period of 12 and 5 months, respectively. Additionally, the blast cells dropped to only 3% and 0% in the bone marrow aspirates of those two cases, respectively, after it was 30% in both cases at diagnosis.Conclusion The immune response that emerged against COVID-19 infection could potentially produce anti-tumor immunity in some patients, or the virus may act as an oncolytic virus. However, further investigations are required to explain this phenomenon, which may help in finding a possible new targeted therapy for these cases.