"Immunotherapy can cause perplexing side effects"

"Immunotherapy can cause perplexing side effects" -- Washington Post article, you're entitled to view 10 articles a month for free

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/healt...amp;wpmm=1

Quote:

---

Legg, 55, is one of a growing number of wary veterans of powerful new medications that are revolutionizing cancer treatment. Her therapy knocked back her cancer, and she’s glad she got it. But the drug also gave her “almost every ‘itis’ you can get,” she said: arthritis-like joint pain, lung inflammation called pneumonitis and liver inflammation that bordered on hepatitis, in addition to the uveitis. She warns patients that highly touted immunotherapy treatments have downsides as well as benefits and to watch for complications, because “not all doctors know all the side effects.”

Called checkpoint inhibitors, the new therapies offer a tantalizing chance for survival for patients with advanced melanoma and hard-to-treat cancers of the bladder, kidney and lung. But the treatments, designed to unleash the immune system to attack malignancies, also can spur an assault on healthy organs, causing varied and bizarre side effects ranging from minor rashes and fevers to diabetes and deadly heart problems.

---

Let's see, what should I prescribe to a patient: a checkpoint inhibitor, or Kevetrin? Which one should I try first?