The Impact of High-Dose Glucocorticoids on the Outcome of Immune-Checkpoint Inhibitor-Related Thyroid Disorders.

ABSTRACT

Thyroid disorders have emerged as one of the most common immune-related adverse events (irAE), yet optimum management and biomarkers to predict vulnerable individuals remain to be explored. High-dose glucocorticoid (HDG) therapy is routinely recommended for irAEs. However, systematic analysis of the impact of glucocorticoid therapy on the outcome of immune-checkpoint inhibitor (ICI)-induced thyroid disorders is lacking. We analyzed 151 patients with or without ICI-related thyroid disorders. We divided the patients with ICI-related thyroid disorders into two subgroups those with and without HDG treatment. Our results showed no significant differences between HDG and no HDG groups in terms of the median duration of thyrotoxicosis 28 (range, 7-85) and 42 (range, 14-273) days, the median time to conversion from thyrotoxicosis to hypothyroidism 39 days (range, 14-169) and 42 days (range, 14-315) days, the median time to onset of hypothyroidism 63 (range, 21-190) and 63 (range, 14-489) days, and the median maintenance dose of levothyroxine 1.5 (range, 0.4-2.3) µg/kg/day, and 1.3 (range, 0.3-2.5) µg/kg/day. The median pretreatment TSH was 2.3 (range, 0.3-5.2) mIU/L and 1.7 (range, 0.5-4.5) mIU/L in patients with and without ICI-related thyroid disorders, respectively. Baseline TSH was significantly higher in patients who developed ICI-related thyroid disorders (P = 0.05). Subgroup analysis revealed significantly higher baseline TSH in male but not in female patients with ICI-induced thyroid dysfunction. Our results show that HDG treatment did not improve the outcome of ICI-related thyroid disorders.