Review Prevalence and risk factors for long COVID among cancer patients: a systematic review and meta-analysis, 2025, Xu et al

Prevalence and risk factors for long COVID among cancer patients: a systematic review and meta-analysis

Hongkun Xu, Tingting Lu, Yajie Liu, Jingqi Yang, Simeng Ren, Baojin Han, Honghao Lai, Long Ge, Jie Liu

Objective
The prevalence of long COVID among cancer patients remains unknown. This study aimed to determine the prevalence of long COVID and explore potential risk factors among cancer patients.

Methods
A systematic search was performed on PubMed, Web of Science, and Embase from database inception until 21 March 2024, to identify studies that reported long COVID in cancer patients. Two investigators independently screened the studies and extracted all information about long COVID in cancer patients for subsequent analysis. Methodological quality was assessed using the “Joannagen Briggs Institute (JBI) Critical Appraisal Checklist for Studies Reporting Prevalence Data”.

Results
A total of 13 studies involving 6,653 patients were included. The pooled prevalence of long COVID was 23.52% [95% confidence interval (CI), 12.14% to 40.64%] among cancer patients reported experiencing long COVID after acute severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection. The pooled prevalence of any long COVID in cancer patients was 20.51% (95% CI, 15.91% to 26.03%), 15.79% (95% CI, 11.39% to 21.47%), and 12.54% (95% CI, 6.38% to 23.18%) in 3, 6, and 12 months follow-up duration. Fatigue was the most common symptom, followed by respiratory symptoms, myalgia, and sleep disturbance. Patients with comorbidities had a significantly higher risk of experiencing long COVID [odds ratio (OR) = 1.72; 95% CI, 1.09 to 2.70; p = 0.019]. No statistically significant differences in sex, primary tumor, or tumor stage were detected.

Conclusion
Nearly a quarter of cancer patients will experience long COVID after surviving from SARS-CoV-2 infection, and this would even last for 1 year or longer. Fatigue, respiratory symptoms, myalgia, and sleep disturbance need to be more addressed and managed to reduce symptom burden on cancer patients and improve quality of life. Patients with comorbidities are at a high risk of developing long COVID. Further randomized controlled trials with rigorous methodological designs and large sample sizes are needed for future validation.

Link | PDF (Frontiers in Oncology) [Open Access]

 

LC defined as symptoms for longer than 4 weeks.

Unexpected.

Does anyone know the current estimate for the prevalence of LC in the general population?

If anything, this might lead to some cancer funding to study LC in cancer patients.

 

Better follow-up and detection of infections and outcomes? i’m assuming a cancer patient with new LC-brain fog won’t get dismissed as psychosomatic.

 

I’ve heard of some that dismiss many things as “stress” or “psychosomatic”. But that doesn’t change that cancer patients are some of the most well “understood”/regarded patient groups out there, it’s just that psychosomatics has infected nearly every facet of medicine.