The Biggest Questions Around COVID-19 Vaccines & Cancer

The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has left us all with lots of questions about our personal health, especially for those with cancer. In this week’s Body Language, we ask experts from the NIH’s Office of Research on Women’s Health and The Leukemia and Lymphoma Society to talk about some of the biggest questions surrounding COVID-19 and cancer.
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The area of sharpest decline in cancer screenings was for women from underserved communities, where COVID-19 already has an outsized impact. That’s on top of an existing information gap that’s always been there, many people actually don’t know how often they should be screened for things like breast and cervical cancer, and this knowledge is even less common in communities of color.

One of the reasons that mortality from cancer has been declining in the United States is because we've been continuously improving some of our cancer screenings. The best example of this is in cervical cancer, once widespread pap smear screening became available in the United States, cervical cancer went from being one of the leading causes of death in women to a relatively rare disease.

Blood cancer like leukemia or lymphoma don’t actually have screening options like a mammogram for breast cancer or a pap smear for cervical cancer— you just have to go to the doctor if something doesn’t feel right. These cancers impact the white blood cells.

#bodylanguage #seeker #covid #coronavirus #cancer #health

To learn more about The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society, check out these resources:
National Patient Registry for answering COVID-19 questions for blood cancer patients:
https://bit.ly/3tmzpmf
LLS research impact grants: https://bit.ly/3nkjkJW
FAQ on COVID-19 vaccines for patients and caregivers: https://bit.ly/3qnTgzz

Read more:

New Study Shows Most Blood Cancer Patients Benefit from an Additional COVID-19 Vaccine Dose
https://www.lls.org/news/new-study-shows-most-blood-cancer-patients-benefit-additional-covid-19-vaccine-dose
More than one in two patients with B-cell blood cancers produced antibodies to a third dose of COVID-19 vaccine despite having no detectable antibodies after the first two doses, according to a new study from The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society (LLS). The study also showed that patients who had detectable antibodies after the first two vaccine doses had increased levels after the third dose.

COVID-19 Vaccine: Can It Affect Your Mammogram Results?
https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/conditions-and-diseases/coronavirus/covid19-vaccine-can-it-affect-your-mammogram-results
The COVID-19 vaccine, like other vaccinations, can cause a temporary enlargement of lymph nodes. This can cause your mammogram to appear abnormal even when you are OK and there is no indication of cancer. But, enlarged lymph nodes can result in a “false positive” on your mammogram. You may get a request to return for further testing — a call-back — which can be unsettling.

Expert Q&A: Cancer, COVID-19 and Mental Health https://www.cedars-sinai.org/newsroom/expert-qa-cancer-covid-19-and-mental-health/
One of the easiest ways they can reduce stress and anxiety is to limit exposure to things that trigger anxiety. Staying informed is important, but it’s also important to set boundaries for how much news you consume about the COVID-19 pandemic.

Editor’s Note: At Seeker, we recognize that people of many genders and identities have vaginas and uteruses, and are affected by the topics covered in Body Language: not only women. Where gendered language does appear is in reference to specific language used within the scientific studies cited.
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Body Language is Seeker’s latest series diving into the world of female health. For so long, the medical field only used male bodies to conduct research, creating a gap in terms of what we currently know about female bodies. In this series, we'll be talking to experts to get a better understanding of some of these issues, and we discover how incredibly cool the female body is and how much more we still have to learn about it.

Seeker empowers the curious to understand the science shaping our world. We tell award-winning stories about the natural forces and groundbreaking innovations that impact our lives, our planet, and our universe.

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Thanks to Maren Hunsberger for hosting this episode of Body Language.
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