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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Immunol.
Sec. Cancer Immunity and Immunotherapy
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fimmu.2025.1499074
This article is part of the Research Topic Community Series in Methods in Cancer Immunity and Immunotherapy: Volume II View all 4 articles

Immune checkpoint inhibitor-induced diabetes mellitus: Clinical characteristics and risk factors

Provisionally accepted
Mei Zhan Mei Zhan 1Qinran Long Qinran Long 2Jinhan He Jinhan He 1Litao Huang Litao Huang 3Bin Wu Bin Wu 1Haixia Xu Haixia Xu 1Li Mo Li Mo 4Ting Xu Ting Xu 1*
  • 1 Department of Pharmacy, West China Hospital, Sichuan University, Chengdu, China
  • 2 West China School of Pharmacy, Sichuan University, Chengdu, Sichuan Province, China
  • 3 Department of Clinical Research Management, West China Hospital, Sichuan University, Chengdu, Sichuan Province, China
  • 4 Center of Gerontology and Geriatrics, West China Hospital, Sichuan University, Chengdu, Sichuan Province, China

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Background: Emerging evidence indicates that immune checkpoint inhibitors induced diabetes mellitus (ICI-DM) might be more common than initially reported and more different clinical pictures associated with ICI-DM were described.The aim of our study was to identify clinical characteristics and possible predictive factors of ICI-DM.We conducted a retrospective review of patients who received immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICI) at West China Hospital, Sichuan University until June 2023. Patients were reviewed up at death or on May 7, 2024. We applied logistic regression to study associations between clinical characteristics and ICI-DM.Results: Our study included 8199 participants who received ICI between October 2014 and June 2023. Among them, 1077 patients (13.14%) developed ICI-DM according the diagnostic criteria based on guidelines. By excluding patients influenced by glucocorticoids or immunosuppressants, ICI-DM was observed in 713 of 8199 (8.70%) patients. In all patients, hypertension, hyperlipidemia, using glucocorticoids or immunosuppressants, lung cancer and using more than one pathways of ICI were associated with higher risk of ICI-DM. But the risk factors for ICI-DM in patients without the influence of glucocorticoids or immunosuppressants were only hypertension, hyperlipidemia and pancreatic lesions. In the both all patients and the patients excluding the influence of glucocorticoids and immunosuppressants, Patients with diabetes may be associated with a reduced risk of ICI-DMhypertension, hyperlipidemia may have an increased risk for ICI-DM. in both groups.Conclusions: This large, real-world cohort demonstrates that the incidence of ICI-DM may be underestimated in previous literature. Blood glucose monitoring is needed in patients receiving ICI therapy.

    Keywords: immune checkpoint inhibitors, Diabetes Mellitus, Immune-related adverse events, Cancer, Immunotherapy

    Received: 20 Sep 2024; Accepted: 09 Jan 2025.

    Copyright: © 2025 Zhan, Long, He, Huang, Wu, Xu, Mo and Xu. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Ting Xu, Department of Pharmacy, West China Hospital, Sichuan University, Chengdu, China

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