‘Prevention is better than cure’: warning for comedications in patients receiving immune checkpoint inhibitors to avoid acute kidney injury

The introduction of immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICI) has resulted in significant improvement in cancer care, but has been accompanied by the occurrence of immune-related adverse events (irAEs). Also, kidney irAEs have been reported, and the most frequent one is acute tubulointerstitial disease which impacts renal and overall prognosis. There is an unmet need to stratify renal risk in oncologic patients, to allow individualized monitoring and therefore, early detection of ICI-related acute kidney injury (ICI-AKI). Although risk factors for ICI-AKI have been described in previous case–control studies, where ‘cases’ were ICI-AKI patients and ‘controls’ ICI-treated patients without AKI, there is limited epidemiologic knowledge concerning patients developing different irAEs. In this issue of the Clinical Kidney Journal, Gerard et al. describe five factors that were associated with the development of ICI-AKI: older age, previous chronic kidney disease, and concomitant use of fluindione, non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs and proton pump inhibitors. These findings suggest that ICI may be a ‘second hit’ that precipitates AKI caused by a concomitant drug. These results urge an increased focus to prevent the prescription of potential nephrotoxic drugs in ICI-treated patients, avoiding iatrogenic events.