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Citation:

Kandeel, E. Z., L. Refaat, R. Abdel-Fatah, M. Samra, A. Bayoumi, M. S. Abdellateif, H. Abdel-Hady, M. Ali, and medhat khafagy, "Could COVID-19 induce remission of acute leukemia?", Hematology (Amsterdam, Netherlands), vol. 26, issue 1, pp. 870-873, 2021.

Abstract:

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.