Immunotherapy combined with radiotherapy in the treatment of lung cancer: a meta-analysis of therapeutic effectiveness, safety considerations, and abscopal effect

作者：Min Gao, Mingxuan Su, Jinyuan Wang, Rutong Wang, Jiawei Yi, Ke-Ming Xiang, Renhe Deng, Linxi Jiang, Yu Zeng, Junhui He, Yuqiang Lv · 发表于：BMC Cancer · 年份：2025 · DOI：10.1186/s12885-025-14542-w · 被引用次数：8 · 研究领域：Medicine

With the escalating global incidence and mortality of lung cancer, immunotherapy has achieved modest success while facing persistent challenges. The immunomodulatory effect of radiotherapy has gradually gained attention, especially the abscopal effect observed in the combination of radiotherapy and immunotherapy. Although mechanistically controversial, its clinical significance in lung cancer treatment is noteworthy. Therefore, this study aims to delve into the therapeutic differences between immunotherapy using immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICI) combined with radiotherapy (RT) and traditional immunotherapy alone, aiming to provide scientific evidence for optimizing lung cancer treatment strategies, improving patient outcomes, and enhancing survival rates. Literature searches were conducted in PubMed, Embase, Web of Science, and the Cochrane Library up to 26 March 2024. Heterogeneity, sensitivity analysis, forest plots, clipping plots, and publication bias were analysed using RevMan5.4 and Stata 12.0. This meta-analysis included 19 articles, encompassing 5109 lung cancer patients in the ICI + RT group and 4686 patients in the ICI group. Meta-analysis revealed that the progression-free survival (PFS) (HR = 0.68, 95%CI [0.62–0.75], p < 0.00001) and overall survival (OS) (HR = 0.70, 95%CI [0.62–0.79], p < 0.00001) of lung cancer patients in the ICI + RT treatment group were longer than those in the ICI treatment group, and ICI + RT or ICI treatment for lung cancer patients did n...