A study from Israel supports the short-term safety of the Pfizer-BioNTech mRNA COVID-19 vaccine in patients with cancer being treated with immune checkpoint inhibitors.

The researchers report on 134 adults with cancer receiving immune checkpoint-inhibitor therapy alone (87%) or in combination with chemotherapy (13%) who have received two doses of the vaccine.

As previously reported in other populations, more systemic and local side effects were observed after the second dose of vaccine than after the first dose, they write in the Lancet Oncology.

The most common local side effects were injection-site pain, rash and swelling and the most common systemic side effects were muscle pain, fatigue, headache, fever, chills, gastrointestinal complications and flu-like symptoms.