@article {219681, title = {Could COVID-19 induce remission of acute leukemia?}, journal = {Hematology (Amsterdam, Netherlands)}, volume = {26}, year = {2021}, pages = {870-873}, 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.

}, author = {Eman Z. Kandeel and Refaat, Lobna and Abdel-Fatah, Raafat and Mohamed Samra and Bayoumi, Ahmed and Abdellateif, Mona S and Abdel-Hady, Hend and Mohamed Ali and medhat khafagy} }