A large US study finds that hospitalized COVID-19 patients taking medications that suppress the immune system, including cancer patients, are not at overall higher risk for dying of their infection or requiring invasive mechanical ventilation than those not taking these drugs.Early in the pandemic, immunosuppressed patients were thought to be at elevated risk of poor COVID-19 outcomes.
Some damage to the lungs and other organs in severe infections are believed to result from overactivation of the immune system, and by summer 2020, physicians were treating severe COVID-19 with immunosuppressive drugs such as dexamethasone, the researchers noted.Only rituximab tied to death, ventilationIn the retrospective study, published this week in The