COVID-19 in children with haematological malignancies

Gerard Cathal Millen*, Roland Arnold, Jean Baptiste Cazier, Helen Curley, Richard Feltbower, Ashley Gamble, Adam Glaser, Richard G. Grundy, Laura Kirton, Lennard Y.W. Lee, Martin G. McCabe, Claire Palles, Bob Phillips, Charles A. Stiller, Csilla Varnai, Pamela Kearns

*Corresponding author for this work

    Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

    16 Citations (Scopus)
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    Abstract

    Background: Children with cancer are not at increased risk of severe SARS-CoV-2 infection; however, adults with haematological malignancies have increased risk of severe infections compared with non-haematological malignancies. 

    Methods: We compared patients with haematological and non-haematological malignancies enrolled in the UK Paediatric Coronavirus Cancer Monitoring Project between 12 March 2020 and 16 February 2021. Children who received stem cell transplantation were excluded. 

    Results: Only 2/62 patients with haematological malignancy had severe/critical infections, with an OR of 0.5 for patients with haematological compared with non-haematological malignancies. 

    Interpretation: Children with haematological malignancies are at no greater risk of severe SARS-CoV-2 infection than those with non-haematological malignancies.

    Original languageEnglish
    Pages (from-to)186-188
    Number of pages3
    JournalArchives of Disease in Childhood
    Volume107
    Issue number2
    Early online date22 Jul 2021
    DOIs
    Publication statusPublished - 20 Jan 2022

    Bibliographical note

    Funding Information: University of Birmingham provided the database and bio-informatics support, GCM is partially funded by a Cancer Research UK grant (A30259). This paper presents independent research supported by the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Birmingham Biomedical Research Centre (Grant Reference Number BRC-1215-20009).

    The funder of the study had no role in study design, data collection,
    data analysis, data interpretation or writing of the report. The views expressed are
    those of the author(s) and not necessarily those of the NIHR, Public Health England or the Department of Health and Social Care. GCM had full access to all data from the study and had the final responsibility for the decision to submit for publication.

    Open Access:This is an open access article distributed in accordance with the
    Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Unported (CC BY 4.0) license, which permits
    others to copy, redistribute, remix, transform and build upon this work for any
    purpose, provided the original work is properly cited, a link to the licence is given,
    and indication of whether changes were made. See: https://creativecommons.org/
    licenses/by/4.0/.

    Publisher Copyright: © Author(s) (or their employer(s)) 2022. Re-use permitted under CC BY. Published by BMJ.

    Citation: Millen GC, Arnold R, Cazier J, et al. COVID-19 in children with haematological malignancies. Archives of Disease in Childhood 2022;107:186-188.

    DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/archdischild-2021-322062

    Keywords

    • COVID-19
    • data collection
    • epidemiology

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