Clinical Outcomes of Patients with Chronic Myeloid Leukemia and COVID-19 Infection-A Single Center Survey.

Background

Previous research has shown different effects of hematological malignancies on the outcome of patients with COVID-19 infection depending on the type of disease and the treatment received. This research was aimed at examining the clinical outcome of COVID-19 infection in positive patients with chronic myeloid leukemia treated with tyrosine kinase inhibitors.

Methods

We collected retrospective information on chronic myeloid leukemia patients who were treated and monitored in our institution during the pandemic period. Within this cohort, we recorded COVID-19 positive symptomatic patients and analyzed their basic characteristics, symptoms, severity, and outcome.

Results

In the study cohort when COVID-19 was diagnosed, 86.7% of patients were on first-generation tyrosine kinase inhibitors therapy-imatinib. At the time of infection, 70% of patients were in molecular remission, 23.4% in complete cytogenetic remission, and 3.3% in complete hematological response. Most patients had symptomatic disease. Within the analyzed group, 56.7% of patients had asymptomatic/mild COVID-19 infection, 23.3% of patients had moderate symptoms which did not require hospitalization, and 20% of patients had severe/critical symptoms that required admission to the intensive care unit. More than half of the patients interrupted treatment with tyrosine kinase inhibitors temporarily during COVID-19. There were no deaths due to COVID-19 infection.

Conclusions

In compliance with other larger clinical studies, analysis of the clinical outcome of COVID-19 infection in patients with chronic myeloid leukemia on tyrosine kinase inhibitors therapy in this study showed that they do not have an increased risk for COVID-19 infection and that they have a mild course of the disease with recovery.