Coronavirus mRNA vaccines are safe and effective in lung cancer patients, most of whom gain immune protection after two doses, according to a new French scientific study.
It was also found that when a third booster dose was given to 11% of patients who had low levels of antibodies after the two doses, then almost nine out of ten (88%) also acquired adequate antibody protection.
Although vaccines Covid-19 have long been shown to be generally safe and effective in the general population, little was known about whether patients with lung / thoracic cancer develop an adequate immune response, as they were initially excluded from most vaccine trials. Also previous studies had shown that these patients had a mortality of about 30% of Covid-19, significantly larger than the general population.
Researchers at Bichat-Claude Bernard University Hospital in Paris, published in the Journal of Thoracic Oncology, studied 306 lung cancer patients with a mean age of 67 years. Of these, 283 had received two doses of Pfizer / BioNTech vaccine 28 days apart (those who had coronavirus antibodies due to a previous infection Covid-19, made only one dose).
After six to seven months, only eight patients (2,6%) had developed Covid-19 with symptoms, but with a favorable outcome of the disease. 34 (11%) had very low levels of antibodies, especially the elderly, those who had undergone chemotherapy in the last trimester and those who had received long-term treatment with corticosteroids. The 30 gave a third dose and eventually only three patients - who had blood cancers that are known to often not respond well to vaccines - continued to show very low levels of antibodies.
No cases of anaphylaxis were reported. The researchers, however, pointed out the need for their findings to be confirmed by a larger study.
Source: RES-EAP