This transcript has been edited for clarity.
As many of us know, there is a therapy for cancer, known as immune checkpoint inhibitors, that in addition to treating cancer can also cause new-onset type 1 diabetes. I’ve always been interested in this because I don’t really understand what’s happening, and also because patients who develop this form of type 1 diabetes really have type 1 diabetes.
There’s no honeymoon period. They’re often in diabetic ketoacidosis (DKA), and they need to be treated from the get-go as people who are completely insulin deficient. There have been a number of recent case series discussing this type of diabetes, but there’s still much that we don’t know.
First, immune checkpoint inhibitors are different from conventional cancer treatments. I’m not an expert on this, but I do know they…