The negative effect of antibiotics on RCC patients with immunotherapy: A systematic review and meta-analysis

Microbiome dysbiosis is considered a predictive biomarker of clinical response in renal cell carcinoma (RCC), which can be regulated by antibiotics (ATB). Multiple studies have shown that concomitant ATB administration has inhibitory effects on immunotherapy in RCC. This review aimed to assess the impact of ATB on patient survival and tumor response in RCC with immunotherapy.

Literature evaluating the effect of ATB on immunotherapy in RCC from Cochrane Library^®, PubMed^®, Embase^®, Scopus^®, and Web of Science^® were systematically searched. Hazard ratios (HR) for progression-free survival (PFS) and overall survival (OS), odds ratio (OR) for objective response rate (ORR) and primary progressive disease (PD) were pooled as effect sizes for clinical outcomes. Subgroup analysis was conducted to reveal the determinants of the effect of ATB on immunotherapy, including time windows of ATB exposure to immunotherapy initiation, ICIs treatment and study location. The leave-one-out approach was adopted to analyze the heterogeneity formulated. Cumulative meta-analysis adding by time was used to observe dynamic changes of the results.

Ten studies were included in the systematic review and six studies (with n=1,104 patients) were included in the meta-analysis, four studies were excluded for overlapping patients with subsequent larger studies and lack of unique patient-level data. ATB administration was significantly correlated with shorter PFS (HR=2.10, 95%CI [1.54; 2.85], I² = 2% after omitting study Derosa et al, 2021 detected by leave-one-out approach), shorter OS (HR=1.69, 95%CI [1.34; 2.12], I² = 25%) and worse ORR (OR=0.58, 95%CI [0.41; 0.84]), but no difference was observed in risk of PD (OR=1.18, 95%CI [0.97; 1.44]). No significant differences existed among the subgroups for determining the determinants of ATB inhibition.

Concomitant ATB with immunotherapy was associated with worse PFS, OS and ORR in RCC. No publication bias was observed in this study.

https://www.crd.york.ac.uk/PROSPERO/display_record.php?RecordID=349577, identifier CRD42022349577.