Infections are the cause of more than half of all non-relapse-related deaths after chimeric antigen receptor T-cell immunotherapy for lymphoma and multiple myeloma patients, according to a study published July 8 in Nature Medicine.
Researchers from Boston-based Dana Farber Cancer Institute, New York City-based Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, LMU University Hospital in Munich, Germany, and Davidoff Cancer Center in Tel Aviv, Israel, collaborated on the study.
They analyzed 18 clinical trials and 28 real-world studies from three databases — Medline, Embase and CINAHL — for non-relapse related deaths in 7,604 lymphoma and multiple myeloma patients up to March, according to the study.
Of 574 non-relapse-related deaths, 50.9% were attributed to infections after patients received CAR-T immunotherapy. Only 11.5% were attributed to CAR-T immunotherapy-specific side effects.
Other malignancies and cardiovascular or respiratory events were least attributed to non-relapse-related deaths at 7.8% and 7.3%, respectively.