People who have survived cancer as children are at higher risk of developing severe COVID-19, even decades after their diagnosis. This is shown by a new study from Karolinska Institutet published in the journal The Lancet Regional Health—Europe.

Thanks to medical advances, more and more children are surviving cancer. However, even long after treatment has ended, health risks may remain. In a new registry study, researchers investigated how adult childhood cancer survivors in Sweden and Denmark were affected by the COVID-19 pandemic.

The study included over 13,000 people who had been diagnosed with cancer before the age of 20 and who were at least 20 years old when the pandemic began. They were compared with both siblings and randomly selected individuals from the population of the same gender and year of birth.