SynthesiseLife2022
Effect of cancer on outcome of COVID-19 patients: a systematic review and meta-analysis of studies of unvaccinated patients.
Synthesis in eLife, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 20 papers, 3 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
20 citing papers in PubMed, 3 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- The impact of cancer on the severity of disease in patients affected with COVID-19: an umbrella review and meta-meta-analysis of systematic reviews and meta-analyses involving 1,064,476 participants.Clinical and experimental medicine · 2023Pooled it
- Methodological Considerations on COVID-19 Mortality in Cancer Patients: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis.JNCI cancer spectrum · 2022Pooled it
- Pooled it
- Changes in Home-visit Care Utilization and Outcomes During the Coronavirus Disease 2019 Pandemic: Comparison Between Patients With and Without Cancer.Journal of epidemiology · 2026Observational
- Safety, Immunogenicity, and Efficacy of COVID-19 Vaccines in Radiation-Oncology Patients: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis.Vaccines · 2025Review
- Determinants of SARS-CoV-2 outcomes in patients with cancer vs controls without cancer: a multivariable meta-analysis with genomic imputation.EClinicalMedicine · 2025Article
- Differences in Covid-19 deaths amongst cancer patients and possible mediators for this relationship.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Converging frontiers in cancer treatment: the role of nanomaterials, mesenchymal stem cells, and microbial agents-challenges and limitations.Discover oncology · 2024Review
- MicroRNAs are enriched at COVID-19 genomic risk regions, and their blood levels correlate with the COVID-19 prognosis of cancer patients infected by SARS-CoV-2.Molecular cancer · 2024Article
- Hospital and post-discharge mortality in COVID-19 patients with a preexisting cancer diagnosis in Iran.BMC cancer · 2024Article
- Article
- Decoding Immuno-Competence: A Novel Analysis of Complete Blood Cell Count Data in COVID-19 Outcomes.Biomedicines · 2024Article
- Cancer management during the COVID-19 world pandemic.Cancer immunology, immunotherapy : CII · 2023Review
- Clinical efficacy of the first two doses of anti-SARS-CoV-2 mRNA vaccines in solid cancer patients.Cancer medicine · 2023Observational
- Review
- Global Association of COVID-19 Pandemic Measures with Cancer Treatment: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis.Cancers · 2022Article
- COVID-19 Vaccination Status and Hesitancy among Breast Cancer Patients after Two Years of Pandemic: A Cross-Sectional Survey.Vaccines · 2022Article
- Vitamin DCancer communications (London, England) · 2022Article
- SARS-CoV-2 Specific Antibody Response and T Cell-Immunity in Immunocompromised Patients up to Six Months Post COVID: A Pilot Study.Journal of clinical medicine · 2022Article
- Prognosis of COVID-19 in the middle eastern population, knowns and unknowns.Frontiers in microbiology · 2022Review
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
5 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Background: Since the beginning of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, cancer patients affected by COVID-19 have been reported to experience poor prognosis; however, a detailed quantification of the effect of cancer on outcome of unvaccinated COVID-19 patients has not been performed. Methods: To carry out a systematic review of the studies comparing the outcome of unvaccinated COVID-19 patients with and without cancer, a search string was devised which was used to identify relevant publications in PubMed up to December 31, 2020. We selected three outcomes: mortality, access to ICU, and COVID-19 severity or hospitalization. We considered results for all cancers combined as well as for specific cancers. We conducted random-effects meta-analyses of the results, overall and after stratification by region. We also performed sensitivity analyses according to quality score and assessed publication bias. Results: For all cancer combined, the pooled odds ratio (OR) for mortality was 2.32 (95% confidence interval [CI] 1.82-2.94, I Conclusions: Our meta-analysis indicates a twofold increased risk of adverse outcomes (mortality, ICU admission, and severity of COVID-19) in unvaccinated COVID-19 patients with cancer compared to COVID-19 patients without cancer. These results should be compared with studies conducted in vaccinated patients; nonetheless, they argue for special effort to prevent SARS-CoV-2 infection in patients with cancer. Funding: No external funding was obtained.
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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.