COVID-19 in children with cancer: a review of case reports

• Main Authors: Muhd Helmi, Muhd Alwi, Bukhari, Mastura, Izzudeen, Ayub
• Format: Conference or Workshop Item
• Language: English; English; English
• Published: 2020
• Subjects: RA Public aspects of medicine; RJ Pediatrics
• Online Access: http://irep.iium.edu.my/86812/2/IHEC%202020%20ORAL%20MUHD%20ALWI%20MUHD%20HELMI.pdf; http://irep.iium.edu.my/86812/8/Oral-slot-for-IHEC-2020-updated-14-DEC-2020.pdf; http://irep.iium.edu.my/86812/14/IHEC%202020%20alwi.pdf; http://irep.iium.edu.my/86812/
• Institution: Universiti Islam Antarabangsa Malaysia

Introduction: Children were less severely affected by COVID-19 infection. The outcome of COVID-19 infection in children with malignancies was uncertain due to the scarcity of cases and lack of studies performed on these children. Objectives: To systematically review the available case reports of oncology children affected with COVID-19 and to determine the typical presentation, course of disease and outcome of these children. Methods: We search for articles published between 1st January 2020 and 1st September 2020 in two databases- Pubmed and Google Scholar using keywords and MeSH terms combined using the Boolean operator. We restricted our search to include only case reports of children less than eighteen years old with an established diagnosis of cancer on chemotherapy or radiotherapy or both. We applied no language restriction. Results: We found a total of 14 reported cases within the search period, with age ranges between 13months and 18 years. All patients were either had haematological malignancies, solid tumours or post-transplant patients. Throat and nasal RT-PCR were used for diagnosis in all cases. The mortality rate was low, with the poorest outcome seen in patients with advanced disease. Otherwise, most patients had mild disease courses and fully recovered with prolonged viral shedding compared to children without cancer. Conclusion: Children with malignancies affected by COVID-19 had a variable presentation of disease with delayed viral clearance. Further researches are needed to determine the causal relationship between the severity of the infection and the severity of underlying malignancies in children with cancer.