ArticleThe oncologist2025
Association of opioid use with survival in patients with cancer treated with immune checkpoint inhibitors: it is time for evidence-based behaviors.
Article in The oncologist, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 7 papers.
What it found
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Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
7 citing papers in PubMed.
- Impact of baseline medications on real-world overall survival in immune checkpoint inhibitor-treated patients with cancer in the RADIOHEAD cohort.Med (New York, N.Y.) · 2026Article
- Breast cancer immunotherapy: mechanisms of immune evasion, biomarkers, and emerging therapeutic strategies.Molecular cancer · 2026Review
- Open Anterolateral Cordotomy for Cancer Pain: Indication, Efficacy, and Safety: A Systematic Literature Review.Journal of clinical medicine · 2026Review
- Endocrine therapies and mortality risk in postmenopausal women with breast cancer: benchmarking an observational analysis against a randomized trial.American journal of epidemiology · 2025Observational
- Inflammation in cardio-oncology and psychological disorders: mechanisms, biomarkers, pain management, and therapeutic strategies.Annals of medicine and surgery (2012) · 2025Review
- Subtype-specific analysis of gene co-expression networks and immune cell profiling reveals high grade serous ovarian cancer subtype linkage to variable immune microenvironment.Journal of ovarian research · 2024Article
- Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
8 authors.
Funding
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Abstract
Cancer is a leading cause of morbidity and mortality worldwide, with pain experienced by most patients undergoing cancer treatment. Opioids are the recommended treatment for cancer pain management, but recent studies suggest a negative association between opioid use and survival rates among patients undergoing immunotherapy. However, conclusions cannot be drawn regarding causality from these observational data. Immunotherapy, which boosts the body's immune system to fight cancer cells, has emerged as a promising treatment option for all types of cancer. Immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs) can activate the anticancer function of exhausted T cells and have shown remarkable survival benefits in patients with multiple malignancies. However, a recent systematic review and meta-analysis suggested that the use of opioids during ICI treatment has an adverse effect on patient prognosis, while the use of NSAIDs is not significantly associated with the prognosis in patients treated with ICIs. These reviews have major limitations due to the retrospective nature of the studies and the multiple factors that can influence the phenomenon. Therefore, caution is required when interpreting results from retrospective data on drug interactions. The findings of this study are alarming and potentially harmful to patients with cancer suffering from pain or other symptoms requiring opioid drugs.
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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.