Use of immune checkpoint inhibitors to treat cancer is growing rapidly — and with it, so is a common side effect: colitis. A small new study suggests fecal transplants might help, but experts caution the potential treatment needs to be studied much more.
Immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs) are a class of immunotherapy drugs that unleash the immune system to attack cancer cells. For some some patients on the drugs, colitis — inflammation in the colon that can cause bleeding, pain, diarrhea, and dehydration — can become so severe that some patients have to pause their cancer treatment while clinicians try to get the inflammation in check.
“In a big cancer center, we see a lot of those patients,” said Dr. Yinghong Wang, a gastroenterologist at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center and an author of the new study, published Monday in Nature Medicine. Patients with ICI-associated colitis are often treated with immunosuppressants such as corticosteroids, which come with their own set of side effects and can increase the risk of infection.
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