Recommendation of Diagnosis and Management for the Infections Related to Immune Checkpoint Inhibitors

Abstract

Immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs) have been widely used in management of malignant tumor. Programmed death ligand 1 (PD-1)/programmed death ligand 1 (PD-L1) inhibitors have been introduced to treat non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) in recent years. Currently, PD-1/PD-L1 inhibitors are considered to have minor side effects and do not independently increase the risk of infection. However, they may cause immune-related adverse events (irAEs) that can require immunosuppressive therapy with corticosteroids and/or immunosuppressants, leading to opportunistic infections. Furthermore, there were reports about reactivation of chronic/latent infections without irAEs. Thus, immune checkpoint inhibitor related infections have drawn more and more attention in the world. In this paper, we described the potential mechanism, available clinical data and recommendation of diagnosis and management for PD-1/PD-L1 inhibitor related infections.


DOI: 10.3779/j.issn.1009-3419.2019.10.11