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New cancer treatments have perplexing 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.
A few years ago, Kevan Herold, an immunologist and endocrinologist at Yale University, noticed that some cancer patients were developing Type 1 diabetes, usually diagnosed in childhood. He realized that the patients’ immunotherapy treatments were killing insulin-producing cells in the pancreas.
Are the cancer treatments worth the trade-off? “Absolutely,” Herold said. “If it’s a choice between staying alive and developing diabetes versus not, I’d always pick taking the drug and managing the diabetes.”
Source: Washington Post