Can you do immunotherapy if you have an autoimmune disease?

 

Autoimmune diseases occur when the immune system goes awry and starts to attack the body's healthy tissues. Immunotherapy drugs, such as immune checkpoint inhibitors, “release the brakes” on the immune system, allowing immune cells to detect and attack tumor cells.

Immunotherapy drugs enhance the ability of the immune system to detect and kill tumor cells. In recent years, these therapies have benefited a growing number of patients, including some patients with advanced cancers. In some patients, immunotherapy can cause the immune system to recognize some of the body’s healthy tissues as foreign and attack them. This can lead to side effects such as inflammation of the inner lining of the colon, the lungs, or heart muscle.

“One of the main reasons for doing the trial is that immunotherapy has cured some patients with metastatic cancer”. “If we can learn how to use immunotherapy to treat people with both cancer and autoimmune diseases, then we could offer these patients potentially curative therapy”. Steroids and immune suppressants help to take down the inflammation and calm the immune system. Although only about 5% of patients on immunotherapy experience these side effects, that number is thought to be higher in patients with autoimmune diseases.

In general, a positive response to immunotherapy is measured by a shrinking or stable tumour. Although treatment side effects such as inflammation may be a sign that immunotherapy is affecting the immune system in some way, the precise link between immunotherapy side effects and treatment success is unclear.