Every year, the American Society of Hematology (ASH) conference is an opportunity for the latest research from around the world to be presented. Although conference presentations do not go through peer review (unlike journal articles), they do provide an opportunity to look into what is coming down the research pipeline.
Two presentations touched on Waldenstrom’s and Covid-19.
https://ashpublications.org/blood/article/138/Supplement%201/3791/482596/Patients-with-Multiple-Myeloma-on-Anti-CD38-or?searchresult=1 reported on an ongoing study from Greece. It compared the antibody response of WM and MM patients vaccinated with either the Pfizer or the Astra-Zeneca vaccines against a similar population of healthy controls. Key quote: “Active treatment with either rituximab or Bruton’s Tyrosine Kinase inhibitors (BTKIs) was proven as an independent prognostic factor for suboptimal antibody response following vaccination in WM (p<0.05)”.
https://ashpublications.org/blood/article/138/Supplement%201/816/480036/Efficacy-of-Vaccine-BNT162b2-Pfizer-BioNTech-in?searchresult=1 reported on a similar but slightly smaller study from Australia. This one used only the Pfizer vaccine, and compared WM and Follicular Lymphoma patients against healthy controls. Key quote: “In WM, patients on BTKi had a significantly reduced response compared to treatment-naïve patients. This same reduction was not observed in the chemotherapy-rituximab cohort …”
For those interested in diving deeper, you can see all of the ASH conference publications that touched on Waldenstrom’s at this link: https://ashpublications.org/search-results?q=Waldenstrom%27s&fl_IssueNo=Supplement+1&fl_Volume=138&fl_SiteID=1&page=1.