UCSF

Objective

To increase awareness of unusual inflammatory and other responses including severe insulin resistance (IR) associated with the use of targeted immunotherapies such as brentuximab.

Methods

We report the case of a man without any previous diagnosis of diabetes who developed diabetic ketoacidosis complicated by severe IR (unresponsive to >600 units of intravenous insulin per hour) after receiving brentuximab for Hodgkin lymphoma.

Results

Autoantibodies to the insulin receptor were not detected in the patient's serum, thus excluding a diagnosis of type B IR.

Conclusion

We hypothesize that brentuximab administration led to a rare reaction leading to systemic cytokine release with extreme IR in our patient.