17:21
weddings travel plans music festivals graduations dental cleanings pretty much everything has gotten put on hold during the cove 19 pandemic that includes healthcare stuff like preventative medical care has gotten pushed to the back seat as the virus has taken the wheel so what have these delays meant for overall health especially when it comes to something like cancer for some context my partner at the time was diagnosed with lymphoma in early 2019 this is pre-pandemic we spent about six months basically living in the hospital and after that experience all i could think about during the pandemic was how much harder that all would have been if we'd had to go through it during copic 19 especially at the beginning at
the point of diagnosis because it was difficult enough to get seen by a doctor in pre-pandemic times but regular checkups and cancer screenings drastically dipped during the early months of the pandemic as health care systems contended with the virus and folks wanted to avoid high-risk locations like hospitals what oncologists worry about is that these delays and screening will cause more patients to be diagnosed at later stages where treatment is more difficult and complicated and potentially takes more away from the patient's quality of life and the area of sharpest decline in cancer screenings was for women from underserved communities where coven 19 already has an outsized impact and that's on top of an existing information
gap that has always been there like many people don't actually know how often they should be screened for things like breast and cervical cancer and this knowledge is even less common in communities of color and that's really concerning one of the reasons that mortality from cancer has been declining in the united states is because we've been continuously improving some of our cancer screenings the best example of this is in cervical cancer once widespread pap smear screening became available in the united states cervical cancer went from being one of the leading causes of death in women to a relatively rare disease recent studies show that some cancer screenings but not all and not in all places have bounced back to pre-pandemic levels and catching any cancer early is
absolutely essential to ensure a better outcome for the patient but it's especially true in the time of covid and especially true for those who have a blood cancer like leukemia or lymphoma and this is because those diseases actually don't have screening options like a mammogram for breast cancer or a pap smear for cervical cancer you just have to go to the doctor if something doesn't feel right plus these cancers impact the white blood cells the white blood cells fight all pathogens bacteria funguses viruses anything that can attack your body and make you sick when you are a patient with leukemia or lymphoma both the disease itself and the treatment can impact the number and function of those white blood cells
recent research has shown that those with blood cancer in particular are at much higher risk of longer and more severe cova 19 illness than people with a kind of cancer that presents with solid tumors the b lymphocytes are the exact cells that are able to produce the proteins we call antibodies in response to infection so patients who either the malignancy itself involves those cells or the treatment for the malignancy knocks down those cells are less able to make antibodies both to primary infection or when they get an immunization so what does this mean for blood cancer patients when it comes to getting the coven 19 vaccine luckily researchers have been studying exactly this several studies have found that even in
immunosuppressed cancer patients an mrna vaccine can produce at least some antibody response just not one as strong as we'd see in someone with a healthy immune system in a study from the leukemia and lymphoma society of more than 1400 blood cancer patients there were some who depending on their cancer type were less likely to produce antibodies in response to a full mrna vaccine course but this research has been extended to look at a small number of those patients who went on to get a booster shot and there's good news here we were able to show that almost half of these patients albeit small numbers who were sero-negative or didn't make the antibodies before half of them got a boost and were able
to make antibodies from a third shot but at this already complex intersection of cancer care and covid immunization health inequalities across class race and ethnicity and gender need to be taken into consideration too like who has access to cancer care who has access to the vaccine who is able to get their cancer diagnosed and treated in time and how does social identity play a role in all of this women tend to have a different immune system than men there are different receptors that are targeted by various immuno oncology agents which are newer ways of treating cancer these drugs have been very successful in treating certain malignancies but because women have an overall stronger immune system than men get more of an advantage
from these drugs than women do and so we're still trying to understand all these differences between the immune systems of men and women and how they interact in cancer care to lead to differences in outcomes so like always we need more research and the national cancer institute is conducting a study of 2 000 cancer patients who have contracted covid19 and is following them over the course of two years to monitor their covet immunity during their cancer treatment and recovery another study will be looking at how covet-19 susceptibility and immunity changes in cancer patients depending on the stage of their disease and work like this is how the medical community is able to give solid science-backed advice to cancer patients
on how to navigate things like the kovid 19 pandemic and vaccination as safely as possible there's so much noise out there about what's healthy and what's not what you should do and why you shouldn't which makes it all the more essential and empowering to have access to solid credible information and i really believe that clinical trials are the path forward helping keep cancer patients safe really want to thank the now almost 12 000 patients who agreed to be part of this registry because we could not have done this without patients saying i want to help myself but i want to help other people if you or someone you know is looking for support when dealing with blood cancer then check out the leukemia and
lymphoma society they provide patients with free one-on-one support and opportunities to speak with highly trained oncology professionals so to learn more about them check out the resources we've left in the description below thank you all so much for watching seeker's body language if you have another topic like this you want us to cover in this series then let us know in the comments and i'll see you next time
