What's the status of cancer patients six months after vaccination?

• Author: ROSSELLA TERCATIN
• Published date: 26 September 2021
• Publication title: Jerusalem Post, The: Web Edition Articles (Israel)

A study led by Prof. Irit Ben-Aharon, director of the Oncology Center at Rambam Hospital, whose findings were published in Cancer Discovery, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research, monitored 154 patients actively undergoing treatment for about half a year after the second dose of the Pfizer vaccine, and compared the results with those of 135 healthy controls.

"Since the beginning of the pandemic, we have been following a group of cancer patients on active treatment for solid tumors, to see all the clinical outcomes of the disease. And when vaccination began, we looked into both the safety and efficacy of the inoculation," Aharon said. "We used healthcare workers for the control group.

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"The age was a key issue as the antibody response was correlated with the age of the individuals," she added.

In the first part of the study, published a few months ago, researchers reported that only 30% of the patients developed antibodies after the first shot, but after the second, the response was similar to the one of the general population: 79% compared to 84%.

They continued to follow the patients for the following six months.

"We were surprised to see that the level in cancer patients decreased in a similar way to that of the general population, not worse," Aharon noted. "This was not what we...