Monday, December 12, 2016

Cancer Drugs May Threaten the Heart

Drugs that use the immune system to fight cancer have now been found to attack the heart in rare cases. Though only 1 percent of patients taking these medicines have developed these heart issues, each case has been severe and led to several deaths. In most cases, patients were taking two checkpoint inhibitors which caused their immune system to attack their heart. These drugs have been a breakthrough in cancer treatments and caused remission for many people, even those who were expected to die because they resisted previous treatments. Some hospitals have added cardiac testing for patients taking more than one checkpoint drug so they can find and stop this issue before it gets too severe. Dr. Benjamin A. Olenchock, a study author from the Division of Cardiovascular Medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston stated that, “As the number of patients treated with checkpoint inhibitors has markedly increased, rare cases of cardiac toxicity associated with the use of these cancer therapeutics, sometimes resulting in death, have been seen at multiple institutions including our own.” Doctors have suggested that using drugs to shut down inflammation in patients heart should stop the deterioration. But by stopping the inflammation by turning off the immune response it can also stop any of the benefits from the inhibitors. For now, there is no way to check a patients vulnerability to developing heart related issues from checkpoint inhibitors.

5 comments:

  1. This is very interesting! Hopefully the cardiac testing can help solve this problem since the drugs are working when it comes to treating cancer.

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  2. This is definitely a progress is helping cancer. The more we know the better for us to treat and prevent cancer. Hopefully with more testing it will be found if there was a link between the inhibitors and the heart.

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  3. I agree with Robert that the more we know the better knowledge for us to treat cancer. This article is very interesting and I hope there is a discovery soon to check a patient's vulnerability to developing heart related issues from checkpoint inhibitors.

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  4. Perhaps what makes coming up with cures so difficult is whether or not individuals are compatible with it. While coming up with drugs to address cancer is a step in the right direction, development of side effects should be something to consider. It is certainly interesting on how further research can help to address the patient's vulnerability through the use of checkpoint inhibitors.

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  5. It's great to know that cancer treatments are working incredibly well. Hopefully there will be a more improved treatment which takes this and other dangerous side effects into account!

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