Vaccination of patients with haematological malignancies who did not have transplantations: guidelines from the 2017 European Conference on Infections in Leukaemia (ECIL 7)

Mikulska, Malgorzata; Cesaro, Simone; de Lavallade, Hugues; Di Blasi, Roberta; Einarsdottir, Sigrun; Gallo, Giuseppe; Rieger, Christina; Engelhard, Dan; Lehrnbecher, Thomas; Ljungman, Per; Cordonnier, Catherine; European Conference on Infections in Leukaemia group,; Maertens, J

doi:10.1016/S1473-3099(18)30601-7

Vaccination of patients with haematological malignancies who did not have transplantations: guidelines from the 2017 European Conference on Infections in Leukaemia (ECIL 7)

Author:

Mikulska, Malgorzata

Cesaro, Simone ; de Lavallade, Hugues ; Di Blasi, Roberta ; Einarsdottir, Sigrun ; Gallo, Giuseppe ; Rieger, Christina ; Engelhard, Dan ; Lehrnbecher, Thomas ; Ljungman, Per ; Cordonnier, Catherine ; European Conference on Infections in Leukaemia group, ; Maertens, J

Keywords:

Science & Technology, Life Sciences & Biomedicine, Infectious Diseases, ACUTE LYMPHOBLASTIC-LEUKEMIA, VARICELLA-ZOSTER-VIRUS, INVASIVE PNEUMOCOCCAL DISEASE, STEM-CELL TRANSPLANTATION, INFLUENZAE TYPE-B, CHRONIC LYMPHOCYTIC-LEUKEMIA, PEDIATRIC ONCOLOGY PATIENTS, CHRONIC MYELOID-LEUKEMIA, NON-HODGKINS-LYMPHOMA, H1N1 2009 VACCINE, Communicable Disease Control, Communicable Diseases, Europe, Hematologic Neoplasms, Humans, Immunocompromised Host, Practice Guidelines as Topic, Vaccination, Vaccines, Attenuated, European Conference on Infections in Leukaemia group, 1103 Clinical Sciences, 1108 Medical Microbiology, 1117 Public Health and Health Services, Microbiology, 3202 Clinical sciences, 3207 Medical microbiology, 4202 Epidemiology

Abstract:

Patients with haematological malignancies are at high risk of infection because of various mechanisms of humoral and cell-mediated immune deficiencies, which mainly depend on underlying disease and specific therapies. Some of these infections are vaccine preventable. However, these malignancies are different from each other, and the treatment approaches are diverse and rapidly evolving, so it is difficult to have a common programme for vaccination in a haematology ward. Additionally, because of insufficient training about the topic, vaccination is an area often neglected by haematologists, and influenced by cultural differences, even among health-care workers, in compliance to vaccines. Several issues are encountered when addressing vaccination in haematology: the small size of the cohorts that makes it difficult to show the clinical benefits of vaccination, the subsequent need to rely on biological parameters, their clinical pertinence not being established in immunocompromised patients, scarcity of clarity on the optimal timing of vaccination in complex treatment schedules, and the scarcity of data on long-term protection in patients receiving treatments. Moreover, the risk of vaccine-induced disease with live-attenuated vaccines strongly limits their use. Here we summarise guidelines for patients without transplantations, and address the issue by the haematological group-myeloid and lymphoid-of diseases, with a special consideration for children with acute leukaemia.