This Cancer Treatment Actually Works Better After COVID Vaccination

A new study shows that the COVID-19 vaccine can help with the treatment of nasopharyngeal cancer, a type of cancer that affects the throat.

Anti-PD-1 therapy is a type of therapy that blocks the surface of immune cells in order to hunt down invaders.

Cancer cells co-opt these receptors to shut down the body's natural defense systems against tumors.

Scientists need to know how COVID-19 vaccines might interact with this type of cancer treatment due to the similarities between the drugs.

It was feared that the vaccine wouldn't work with anti-PD-1 therapy.

The risk for nasopharyngeal cancer is the same as the risk for the coronaviruses.

The records of 1,537 patients were analyzed by the team. 373 people had received a vaccine before starting their cancer treatment.

The unvaccinated patients responded better to anti-PD-1 therapy than they did to the vaccine.

Severe side effects were not experienced more often.

We don't know why this is happening but more research is needed to assess the biological and chemical processes that cause SinoVac to respond better to anti-PD-1 therapy.

"We assume that the vaccine causes certain immune cells to attack the tumors," says a cancer researcher at a Chinese hospital. This hypothesis will be investigated further.

Patients from many different Chinese hospitals were involved in the study, so a variety of demographic and region were covered. Only one type of vaccine and one type of cancer is available.

Southeast Asian countries and southern China have a high incidence of nasopharyngeal cancer. Scientists think the frequent use of air conditioning and nutrition may play a part in the development of the Epstein-Barr virus.

In Taiwan, the disease is one of the leading causes of death for young men, and the hope is that this link between improved treatment effectiveness and COVID-19 vaccine might help develop better ways of tackling the cancer.

The researchers wrote in their paper that future studies are needed to understand underlying mechanisms.

The association of COVID-19 vaccination with increased efficacy of anti-PD-1 therapy with chemotherapy in recurrent nasopharyngeal cancer is interesting, but needs to be verified in a larger study.

The research was published in a medical journal.