Abstract
BACKGROUND: Cancer patients present a distinct vulnerability to COVID-19. It is unclear if chemotherapy could accentuate the overall risk in these patients. METHODS: We performed a retrospective analysis linking COVID-19 data and oncological information systems to compare lethality in patients undergoing cytotoxic chemotherapy before COVID-19. We considered patients who received chemotherapy in the last 30 days as in "active treatment", and patients who did not receive drugs in this period as "non-active treatment" for propensity-score pair matching. We also tested the influence of baseline variables in our results in a multivariate model. RESULTS: 66.1% (162/246) of patients in matched active chemotherapy died vs. 70.2% (172/246) in the matched non-active chemotherapy group. The risk of death was positively associated with palliative intent of treatment and hematologic neoplasms. Being in active chemotherapy was not associated with increased mortality compared to non-active treatment. We also noted in exploratory propensity-score matchings that the use of alkylating agents (odds ratio [OR] 0.38, 95% confidence interval [CI], 0.21-0.70) and topoisomerase II inhibitors (OR 0.28, 95% CI 0.14-0.56) were protective factors. CONCLUSIONS: This study does not demonstrate an increase in mortality for cancer patients under active cytotoxic chemotherapy with COVID-19.