Sarcoid-like reactions in patients receiving modern melanoma treatment

The development of cancer immunotherapy and targeted therapy has reached an important inflection point in the history of melanoma. Immune checkpoint inhibitors and kinase inhibitors are today's standard of care treatments in advanced melanoma patients. Treatment-related toxicities can be very intriguing and quite challenging. Sarcoidosis is a multisystemic granulomatous disease characterized by an aberrant immune response to unknown antigens, whereas sarcoid-like reactions (SLRs) refer to localized clinical features. We carried out a single-center observational study in patients with stage IIB–IV melanoma treated with BRAF/MEK inhibitors and immune checkpoint inhibitors. A description of the sarcoidosis-related manifestations was provided from patients' records. We observated eight cases of SLRs in a cohort of 200 patients. The clinical courses were characterized by a variety of symptoms, accompanied by cutaneous signs and extracutaneous manifestations such as bilateral, hilar lymphadenopathy. We identified a histologically granulomatous inflammation involving the skin, the lungs, and the lymph nodes. Two patients presented with cutaneous lesions only, and three patients had lung involvement only. Three patients achieved complete and partial response of the melanoma disease, and three patients had stable disease. Disease progression was documented in two patients. The reported immune-related adverse events were mild to severe and in most of the cases were continued without any treatment cessation. SLRs appear during treatment with both kinase and immune checkpoint inhibitors. Awareness of these can avoid misdiagnosis of disease progression and unnecessary treatment changes. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives License 4.0 (CCBY-NC-ND), where it is permissible to download and share the work provided it is properly cited. The work cannot be changed in any way or used commercially without permission from the journal. http://ift.tt/1hexVwJ * Reinhard Dummer and Joanna Mangana contributed equally to the writing of this article. Correspondence to Reinhard Dummer, MD, Department of Dermatology, University Hospital Zurich, Gloriastrasse 31, 8091 Zurich, Switzerland Tel: +41 442 552 507; fax: +41 442 554 403; e-mail: reinhard.dummer@usz.ch Received November 3, 2017 Accepted January 27, 2018 Copyright © 2018 Wolters Kluwer Health, Inc. All rights reserved.

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