Immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs) have shown to be effective in the treatment of Hodgkin lymphoma (HL). ICI treatment is associated with the occurrence of a series of immune-related adverse events (irAEs). We conducted an ambispective observational study on 96 patients with relapsed/refractory HL treated with ICIs to determine the incidence of irAEs, their type, severity and their correlation with treatment outcomes. Fifty patients were treated with pembrolizumab (52.1%) and 46 patients were treated with nivolumab (47.9%). A total of 22 patients (22.9%) developed at least one irAE, resulting in a total of 27 irAEs. The results of our study did not show statistically significant differences between the two cohorts of patients, suggesting that the presence of these peculiar toxicities does not significantly impact outcomes and survivals in patients with HL treated with ICIs. However, the complexity of irAEs, their classification as such and the variability in response to immunotherapy require further studies.
Argnani et al. (Thu,) studied this question.