Clinical characteristics of patients with malignant tumors and immune checkpoint inhibitors related multisystem adverse events as well as therapeutic efficacy of immune checkpoint inhibitors: a retrospective study / 肿瘤研究与临床

ABSTRACT

Objective:To investigate the clinical characteristics of patients with malignant tumors and immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICI) related multisystem adverse events as well as therapeutic efficacy of ICI.Methods:The general data, immune-related adverse events (irAE) type, onset time, severity and ICI efficacy of patients with malignant tumors who developed irAE after receiving ICI in China-Japan Friendship Hospital between January 2019 and November 2021 were retrospectively analyzed. All patients were divided into multisystem irAE group and single system irAE group according to whether patients with more than 1 organ or system developed irAE for once. The occurrence of irAE was summarized, and the clinical characteristics of patients were compared. Progression-free survival analysis was not performed owing to the pause of immunotherapy caused by some irAE, so the efficacy of ICI was evaluated by using ICI treatment duration (TD).Results:A total of 47 patients with malignant tumors and irAE were included in this study, with 70 times of irAE in total. The median onset time was 90 d (35 d, 196 d). Among them, 12 patients (25.53%) developed multisystem irAE (32 times of irAE in total); the other 35 patients (74.47%) developed single system irAE (38 times of irAE in total). Cutaneous toxicity for 7 times, thyroid toxicity for 7 times and pulmonary toxicity for 5 times were the most frequent among multisystem irAE group; pulmonary toxicity for 13 times, thyroid toxicity for 12 times and cutaneous toxicity for 5 times were the most frequent among single system irAE group. There were no statistically significant differences in the proportion of patients stratified by age, gender, the combination of other treatments and different body mass between the two groups (all P > 0.05). The median follow-up time was 20 months (9-40 months). The median TD of ICI was 16.00 months (95% CI 3.62-31.22 months) in multisystem irAE group and 4.60 months (95% CI 4.12-11.30 months) in single system irAE group; TD in multisystem irAE group was longer than that in single system irAE group, and the difference was statistically significant ( HR = 0.413, 95% CI 0.202-0.844, P = 0.038). Conclusions:The efficacy of ICI in patients with malignant tumors and multisystem irAE is better than that in those with single system irAE. It suggests that the better efficacy of ICI may be associated with greater risk of irAE. There is no significant difference in the clinical features between multisystem irAE and single system irAE.