Was Concurrent Antibiotic Use during Immunotherapy Associated with Higher Mortality for Patients with Advanced Hepatocellular Carcinoma?

• Published in: Liver cancer (Basel ) Vol. 12; no. 1; pp. 89 - 90
• Main Authors: Hu, Jia-Yu, Liu, Si-Yu, Yuan, Chen, Wang, Ying, Tong, Xiang-Min
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Basel, Switzerland S. Karger AG 01.02.2023; Karger Publishers
• Subjects: Antibiotics; Chen Yuan; China; Conflicts of interest; Hepatoma; Immunotherapy; Infectious diseases; Letter to the Editor; Liver cancer; Medical prognosis; Mortality; Patient outcomes; China
• ISSN: 2235-1795; 1664-5553
• DOI: 10.1159/000526944

[...]these tumor-related variables are very important in this study, not only because these variables should be considered to be well matched by propensity score analysis between antibiotic users and nonusers but also because these potentially correlated variables should be taken into univariable and multivariable analyses associated with cancer-related and all-cause mortality. [...]the authors did not mention whether so-called advanced HCC in this study was based on Barcelona clinic liver cancer (BCLC) staging system, as well as whether a small proportion of patients with unresectable but intermediate (BCLC stage B) HCC were also included in the whole cohort. [...]in addition to the infection nature (anaerobic or aerobic) and duration of antibiotics, in our opinion, the site and severity of infectious diseases requiring antibiotic use for all analytic patients should be clarified in this study, considering its possible relationship with all-cause mortality, especially for noncancer-related mortality.