medwireNews: A large study has failed to find an association between receipt of androgen deprivation therapy (ADT) and a reduced risk for SARS-CoV-2 infection.
Reporting the findings in a poster at the 2021 Genitourinary Cancers Symposium, the researchers explained that preclinical data and an Italian registry study have pointed to a protective effect of ADT against COVID-19, but other research has “failed to confirm this finding.”
Daniel Kwon (University of California, San Francisco, USA) and co-investigators therefore queried the University of California Health COVID Research Data Set – a centralized database for five academic medical centers and 12 affiliated hospitals – to identify 5211 men with prostate cancer who underwent SARS-CoV-2 testing between February and December 2020.
In all, 1.9% of participants tested positive for SARS-CoV-2, but there was no significant difference in the test-positivity rates between the 799 men who received ADT and the 4412 who did not, at 2.3% and 1.8%, respectively.
Moreover, among the 97 men with COVID-19, mortality rates did not differ significantly between those who did versus did not use ADT, with respective rates of 5.3% and 9.0%.
And multivariable analysis did not identify a significant association between receipt of ADT and SARS-CoV-2 infection.
However, the “[r]acial/ethnic disparities in SARS-CoV-2 infection rates described in the USA are also observed in men with prostate cancer,” highlighted Kwon and colleagues. For instance, Black or African–American men had a significant almost twofold greater likelihood of acquiring SARS-CoV-2 than their White counterparts, and the risk was similarly nearly doubled for people of Hispanic or Latin ethnicity.
“No association between ADT and SARS-CoV-2 infection was identified in this large, diverse population of men with prostate cancer,” summarized the researchers.
“Our results do not support a benefit of ADT for SARS-CoV-2 infection or mortality, though deaths were few,” they concluded.
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