Article Document Academic Article Information Content Entity Continuant Continuant Journal Article Entity Entity Generically Dependent Continuant 2025-05-06T16:15:58 RDF description of Life-threatening "hyper-progression" on immunotherapy revealed as pseudo-progression in DNA mismatch repair deficiency: a case report - http://repository.healthpartners.com/individual/document-rn32695 public 21248 Journal of Gastrointestinal Oncology Cancer 14 1 Life-threatening "hyper-progression" on immunotherapy revealed as pseudo-progression in DNA mismatch repair deficiency: a case report <p>BACKGROUND: Distinguishing pseudo-progression from true progression on immunotherapy remains a clinical challenge. Clinical tools to aid in this task are currently lacking. DNA mismatch repair (MMR) status is a known predictive marker for anti-programmed death (PD)-1 therapy, but its role in helping to address this situation is not well-defined. CASE DESCRIPTION: We report the first case, to our knowledge, of life-threatening hyper-progression which was later revealed to be pseudo-progression in a patient with a deficient MMR (dMMR) tumor. We describe a 62-year-old man with advanced dMMR gastric cancer who was being treated with pembrolizumab monotherapy. After three doses of pembrolizumab he exhibited signs and symptoms that met all applicable definitions of hyper-progression in the setting of acute life-threatening gastrointestinal hemorrhage, extensive radiographic progression of metastases, and increasing carcinoembryonic antigen (CEA). Comfort measures were considered given the appearance of hyper-progression. But partly given the patient's request, aggressive support was provided, including blood products, vasopressors, and splenic artery embolization. His condition improved, and subsequent scans revealed regression of his metastases and decreased CEA, confirming pseudo-progression. Pembrolizumab was restarted. The patient remains on pembrolizumab with minimal tumor burden more than one year later. CONCLUSIONS: This case demonstrates that life-threatening hyper-progression can represent pseudo-progression and suggests that MMR status could be important to consider in determining the aggressiveness of clinical management during apparent hyper-progression.<p> 36436 Drugs and Drug Therapy 2023-06-30T21:52:02.627-05:00 document-rn32695 10.21037/jgo-22-709