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Radiology test can be used to diagnose immune checkpoint inhibitor-associated acute kidney injury (non-invasive)
Medical Xpress / Brigham and Women’s Hospital / Journal of Clinical Investigation ^ | Sept. 6, 2024

Posted on 09/09/2024 3:07:47 PM PDT by ConservativeMind

Immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs) are a class of immunotherapy that have revolutionized the treatment of cancer. However, they can cause a wide variety of autoimmune toxicities, including immune checkpoint inhibitor-associated acute kidney injury (ICI-AKI).

Differentiating ICI-AKI from acute kidney injury (AKI) due to alternative causes, is challenging without a kidney biopsy due to the risk of bleeding for some patients.

Tesearchers examined whether F18-FDG PET-CTs, a type of nuclear imaging study, could be used to distinguish patients with ICI-AKI from those with AKI from alternative causes.

They found that patients with ICI-AKI had much higher levels of radioactively-labeled glucose in the kidneys, indicating kidney inflammation, compared to patients with AKI from non-ICI causes.

The most common finding from kidney biopsies in patients with ICI-AKI is acute inflammation in the kidney as a result of activated T-cells. To diagnose this condition in current practice, patients must undergo a kidney biopsy.

In this study, the team sought to address these limitations and investigate the utility of F18-FDG PET-CTs as a way to non-invasively diagnose ICI-AKI.

The study included two control groups: patients with AKI from non-ICI etiologies and patients treated with ICIs who did not have AKI.

Nuclear radiologists reviewed the F18-FDG PET-CTs at baseline and follow-up and recorded the average radiotracer standardized uptake value (SUV) in the renal cortices. The SUV quantifies the amount of radioactively-labeled glucose in the kidneys, serving as a marker of the amount of inflammation and metabolic activity occurring in the kidneys.

The team calculated the average percent change in SUV from baseline to follow-up for each patient. The SUV mean increased by a median of 57.4% from baseline to follow-up among patients with ICI-AKI, whereas it only increased by 8.5% among patients with AKI from non-ICI causes and was unchanged in patients receiving ICIs without AKI.

(Excerpt) Read more at medicalxpress.com ...


TOPICS: Health/Medicine
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For anyone not wanting an actual kidney biopsy, with its downsides, this currently available non-invasive test can now find the type of acute kidney issue you are having, while taking immunotherapy, which allows proper treatment.
1 posted on 09/09/2024 3:07:47 PM PDT by ConservativeMind
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2 posted on 09/09/2024 3:08:34 PM PDT by ConservativeMind (Trump: Befuddling Democrats, Republicans, and the Media for the benefit of the US and all mankind.)
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