The Risk and Impact of COVID-19 Pandemic on Immunosuppressed Patients: Cancer, HIV, and Solid Organ Transplant Recipients

Abstract

Toward the end of the year 2019, there was the eruption of an acute respiratory syndrome, which is widely referred as coronavirus disease (COVID-19) from Wuhan, Hubei Province. The disease causes a range of respiratory illnesses, which are fatal. The COVID-19 disease has spread globally and has significantly impacted the health delivery systems, travel regulations, and economic activities and has posed and upsurge of responsibilities for the frontline healthcare workers. Due to the nature of the COVID-19 disease, it has typically caused complications which include pneumonia, multiple organ dysfunction together with renal failure, and acute respiratory distress syndrome. As of date, there is no approved vaccine or treatment for COVID-19 though there are ongoing research studies to formulate a treatment. COVID-19 is highly contagious, and the risk of infection is higher for patients with immunesuppressed patients than regular patients. The immunesuppressed conditions include cancer, HIV, and patients with solid organ transplants (SOT). This paper aims to review the risk and impact of COVID-19 on immunesuppressed patients, with a focus on cancer, HIV, and patients with SOT and the essence of special parameters for their care and management. Despite the fatal effects of this global pandemic, the findings of this study indicate the high risk which immunosuppressed patients have to contract the disease; thus, the governments and health delivery systems have to offer them extra support and treatment.

Microbial Screening Reveals Oral Site-Specific Locations of the Periodontal Pathogen Selenomonas noxia

“…In addition, as many types of systemic infections, including conditions involving immunocompromised patients (e.g., HIV or COVID-19) involve complications from oral bacteria that can colonize and translocate endotracheal intubation tubes, the ability to sample and specifically locate biofilm constituents based upon location, such as the dorsum of the tongue becomes critically important [44][45][46][47]. In fact, many other clinical settings currently provide oral sampling for other systemic conditions that include, but are not limited to, HIV and hepatitis C viruses [48][49][50][51].…”

Impact of fatigue on quality of life among breast cancer patients receiving chemotherapy

“…Wyatt et al [ 68 ] also reported that pain severity (the main factor associated with fatigue in this study), was a predictor of dose delay or reduction in 385 breast cancer patients. Other studies found that the severity of pain depended on the severity of metastasis, which could indicate to an oncologist that it might be necessary to modify a dose to alleviate a terminal patient’s fatigue levels [ 69 , 70 ].…”

Severe Lymphopenia as a Predictor of COVID-19 Mortality in Immunosuppressed Patients

“…Immunosuppression has a controversial role in COVID-19 pneumonia, because of the key hyperinflammation cascade determining ARDS appearance and the proper defective host immune response in these particular subjects [18]. In this study, we assessed the impact of immunosuppression in COVID-19 mortality and the added value of lymphopenia in immunosuppressed individuals as a prognostic marker in one of the most affected regions by COVID-19 during the first wave [9].…”