Dana-Farber Cancer Institute's Nikhil C. Munshi, MD, details study looking at COVID-19 vaccine effectiveness in patients with multiple myeloma. Research presented at ASH 2021.
this study came in the backdrop of her larger studies in cancer patients. All cancers. How well the Covid vaccine works. And that story is soon to be published in Jama and colleges showed that the vaccine does work in cancer patients where there are certain situation where its effectiveness is reduced and the and the conditions were within three months of getting chemotherapy compared to those who have not had it in a long time or had just had a hormone therapy. So we studied myeloma patients who are known to have some immuno separation how well patients are really predicted from getting covid infection itself. It's a large study and the bottom line message of this study was that the vaccine works and that patients with myeloma when they get taxed in um those who are vaccinated has protection to some extent compared to those who are not vaccinated, but it's quite less compared to the general patient population. Also, we looked at the endless patients with early disease were not treated etcetera. Those patients had a slightly higher protection compared to myeloma patient population can also be observed that around six months the impact of the vaccine goes down. It is important for patients to be careful. The call to action for this patient is that they take the social distancing seriously and utilize masks to protect themselves as even though they are vaccinated, the level of um protection may not be as much as we expect in general population and that this protection may decrease over time, bringing in an account um utilization of the booster vaccination and this is because of treatment but also because of the disease related les decreased immunity.
