Cancer patients double their survival rate if they take Covid vaccine, reveals new study

Professor Luke O'Neill has revealed that cancer patients who have the COVID vaccine live longer.

Speaking on the Pat Kenny show on Newstalk on Thursday morning, Professor O'Neill said the mRNA vaccine is now credited as boosting survival rates in cancer patients by boosting the body's defenses.

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"What they're showing is if you have cancer and you get immunotherapy, to boost your immune system," he said, "and you've also got the vaccine, they're doubling the survival time in lung cancer and melanoma.

"It's a remarkable study - it's retrospective," he explained, "they looked at people who had the vaccine and those who didn't - they're called check-point inhibitors and they've noticed this extension of life.

"With lung cancer, people were living 18 months longer if they'd had the COVID-19 vaccine, which is very significant."

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The groundbreaking study which was published in Nature, a world leading science journal, found those who had cancer that took the vaccine had a survival rate of 55% over a three year period, while those who didn't take the vaccine had a survival rate of 30.8%.

Check-point inhibitors are drugs commonly used in immunotherapy that tackle what are called checkpoint proteins which stop the immune system fighting back against cancer cells.

"The immune system has a thing called a checkpoint and the tumour activates the checkpoint and stops the immune system getting in - like a barrier going down," Professor O'Neill added.

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"If you stop the barrier, the immune system gets in, is the overall idea. And these are working in about 20 or 30% of people; we'd love it to be higher than that.

"Lo and behold, if you get the vaccine with the checkpoint inhibitor, you're doubling the survival time."