Correlation between myelodysplastic syndrome and coronavirus disease 2019 infection

Abstract Background and purpose Patients with hematological malignancies experienced several negative effects from the beginning of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) era. These effects ranged from delays in diagnosis and treatment, to shortages of blood supplies, in addition to the high morbidity and mortality among those patients during these times. Many reviews have discussed the COVID-19 effects on a number of distinct tumors, but nothing has been established about how it affects Myelodysplastic Syndrome (MDS) patients. The current study was conducted to assess the epidemiology of MDS patients with COVID-19 (severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2), and its relation with the disease severity. Results Regarding the correlation between COVID-19 infection and MDS, we found a highly significant link between COVID-19 infection and the hematological presentation of the patients ( P <0.05). Most of our subjects 34 (40.5%) patients fell under the category of MDS-multiple lineage dysplasia, a high significance was found between COVID-19 infection and the classification of MDS and the degree of dysplasia together with the proportion of blast cells in the marrow with a ( P <0.001). Positive significance was also reported between COVID-19 infection and the severity of MDS ( P <0.05). Regarding cytogenetics, the only relation was found between COVID-19 infection and deletion of chromosome 5 and patients with more than one cytogenetic anomaly with P value less than 0.01 and 0.03, respectively. Conclusion Our study demonstrated a robust link between COVID-19 infection and MDS severity, as well as a very significant association between COVID-19 infection with MDS patients’ hematological presentation, blast cell percentage, and degree of dysplasia.