{"id":5056,"date":"2020-07-22T07:41:16","date_gmt":"2020-07-22T07:41:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ncrfrontlinenews.com\/?p=5056"},"modified":"2020-07-22T07:42:52","modified_gmt":"2020-07-22T07:42:52","slug":"immunotherapy-safe-for-patients-with-covid-19-cancer-study","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ncrfrontlinenews.com\/?p=5056","title":{"rendered":"Immunotherapy safe for patients with Covid-19, cancer: Study"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>New York:\u00a0<\/strong>Researchers have now shown that immunotherapy doesn&#8217;t necessarily worsen complications for patients with both Covid-19 and cancer.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Many Covid-19 complications result from an overactive immune response, leading to an increased production of proteins called cytokines,&#8221; said study researcher Layne Weatherford from the University of Cincinnati (UC) in the US.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Increased production of these proteins can cause issues like a respiratory failure. Patients with cancer are more susceptible to Covid-19 infection as well as severe complications from it,&#8221; Weatherford added.<\/p>\n<p>According to the researchers, many patients with cancer are treated with immunotherapy, which activates the immune system against cancer to destroy it. In patients with both Covid-19 and cancer, the research team thought that immunotherapy might increase the immune system response, which could already be overactive because of the Covid-19 infection.<\/p>\n<p>They thought treating Covid-19 patients with cancer immunotherapy might result in worsening patients&#8217; health and overall outcomes. &#8220;We are continuing to investigate whether immunotherapy causes an increased production of these proteins by immune cells from Covid-19 patients, but our initial findings are showing that immunotherapy is not significantly impacting it,&#8221; said study researcher Wise-Draper.<\/p>\n<p>Researchers have conducted this study using blood samples from patients with cancer taken from the UC Covid-19 biorepository. &#8220;We examined how immune checkpoint inhibitors, drugs that allow immune cells to respond more strongly, in combination with other treatments, like chemotherapy or radiation, affect the immune cells of Covid-19 patients and patients with both Covid-19 and cancer,&#8221; she said.<\/p>\n<p>The preliminary data show that an anti-diabetic drug, metformin, can reduce the production of these proteins by immune cells of Covid-19 patients.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;These are promising, initial findings. Additional research is needed, but our results show that we might be able to treat Covid-19 complications with metformin or a similar drug one day,&#8221; the study authors noted.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>New York:\u00a0Researchers have now shown that immunotherapy doesn&#8217;t necessarily worsen complications for patients with both Covid-19 and cancer. &#8220;Many Covid-19 complications result from an overactive immune response, leading to an increased production of proteins called cytokines,&#8221; said study researcher Layne Weatherford from the University of Cincinnati (UC) in the US. &#8220;Increased production of these proteins [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":5057,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-5056","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-health"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ncrfrontlinenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5056","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ncrfrontlinenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ncrfrontlinenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ncrfrontlinenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ncrfrontlinenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5056"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ncrfrontlinenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5056\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5058,"href":"https:\/\/ncrfrontlinenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5056\/revisions\/5058"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ncrfrontlinenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/5057"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ncrfrontlinenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5056"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ncrfrontlinenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5056"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ncrfrontlinenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5056"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}