A case study of a patient in Wuhan, China, published in Blood Advances, found that tocilizumab (Actemra) may be an effective treatment for very ill patients with coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) who also have multiple myeloma and other blood cancers.1
The report also indicated that patients with blood cancer may have atypical COVID-19 symptoms.
“Our patients with hematologic malignancies are immunosuppressed, which may put them at higher risk for novel coronavirus infection,” lead author Changcheng Zheng, MD, of the University of Science and Technology of China, said in a press release.2 “What are the characteristics of COVID-19 in patients with blood cancers? What is the optimal treatment approach? Everything is unknown, and that was the motivation for this study.”
The study subject, a 60-year-old man working in Wuhan, China who had been diagnosed with multiple myeloma…
