About 3% of cancer patients treated with immune-checkpoint inhibitors develop sustained acute kidney injury potentially due to their therapy, a retrospective study suggests.

US researchers reviewed data on more than 1000 cancer patients who received checkpoint inhibitors between 2011 and 2016 at Massachusetts General Hospital.

During a year of follow-up, 17% experienced a transient acute kidney injury, 8% experienced a sustained acute kidney injury lasting for at least three consecutive days, with 3% being deemed potentially checkpoint inhibitor-related.

Most of the remaining cases resulted from haemodynamic acute kidney injury or acute tubular necrosis.