Descriptive and retrospective analysis of diffuse glioma patients with symptomatic SARS-CoV2 infection during the first wave of the pandemic

Fernando Lozano-Sanchez; Renata Ursu; Anna Luisa Di-Stefano; Francois Ducray; Nadia Younan; Mehdi Touat; Matthieu Groh; Hanane Agguini; Catherine Belin; Luois Garnier; Jean-Yves Delattre; Antoine Carpentier; Ahmed Idbaih

doi:10.1093/noajnl/vdab078

Descriptive and retrospective analysis of diffuse glioma patients with symptomatic SARS-CoV2 infection during the first wave of the pandemic

Neurooncol Adv. 2021 Jun 18;3(1):vdab078. doi: 10.1093/noajnl/vdab078. eCollection 2021 Jan-Dec.

Authors

Affiliations

¹ Service Neurology 2 - Mazarin, Assistance Public-Hôpitaux de Paris, Hôpitaux Universitaires La Pitié Salpêtrière-Charles Foix, Sorbonne University, Paris, France.
² Department of Neurology, Saint Louis Hospital, Assistance Publique-Hôpitaux de Paris (AP-HP.Nord), Paris University, Paris, France.
³ Department of Neurology, Foch Hospital, Suresnes, Paris,France.
⁴ Cancerology Research Center of Lyon, INSERM U1052, CNRS UMR 5286, Cancer Cell Plasticity department, Transcriptome Diversity in Stem Cells laboratory, Lyon, France.
⁵ Lyon University, Université Claude Bernard Lyon 1, Lyon, France.
⁶ Service of Neuro-oncology, Hospices Civils de Lyon, Groupement Hospitalier Est, Neurology Hospital, Lyon, France.
⁷ Department of Internal Medicine, Foch Hospital, F-92151 Suresnes, France.

Abstract

Background: Little is known about diffuse glioma patients infected by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV2).

Methods: We performed a descriptive and retrospective analysis of 41 diffuse glioma patients with symptomatic SARS-CoV2 infection during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Results: Confusion with or without fever was the most common neurological symptom (32%) supporting SARS-CoV2 testing in glioma patients with acute and unexplained confusion. Sixteen patients (39%) died after a median delay of 13 days. While multiple clinical, biological, and pathological features, COVID-19- or diffuse glioma-related, at hospital admission appeared to have a pejorative prognostic impact, none was significantly associated with death. Oncological treatments were interrupted at COVID-19 diagnosis and re-initiated with a median delay of 30 days after the end of COVID-19 symptoms.

Conclusions: Interestingly, our retrospective study describes for the first time the characteristics of a cohort of diffuse glioma patients with symptomatic COVID-19. Diffuse glioma patients with poorly symptomatic COVID-19 did not come to the attention of physicians and were not enrolled in the study skewing the denominator for prognostic analysis. Further studies are warranted to specify prognosis of overall population of diffuse glioma patients with COVID-19, including asymptomatic patients, and interactions of prognostic factors of both COVID-19 and diffuse gliomas.

Keywords: COVID-19; SARS-CoV2; diffuse glioma; outcome; prognosis.