Myocarditis in Patients Undergoing Treatment with Immune Checkpoint Inhibitors

Immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICI) are novel agents that help target immune responses toward cancer cells. A retrospective registry from eight institutions highlights a potential side effect of ICI therapy — myocarditis. During 4 years, 35 cases of ICI-related myocarditis occurred (mean patient age, 65; 29% women), for a prevalence of 1.14%. Median onset was 34 days after starting ICI therapy. Pembrolizumab (Keytruda) and nivolumab (Opdivo) were the most commonly used drugs, and melanoma and lung cancer were the most common cancer diagnoses.

Compared with a sample of 105 ICI patients without myocarditis (selected randomly from ≈1000 ICI-treated patients in the registry), those with myocarditis were significantly more likely to have diabetes …