Outcome of melanoma patients with elevated LDH treated with first-line targeted therapy or PD-1-based immune checkpoint inhibition.

Abstract Background Elevated lactate dehydrogenase (LDH) is a known predictive and prognostic factor for a poor outcome in patients with metastatic melanoma. It is unclear whether first-line targeted therapy (TT) or immune checkpoint inhibition (ICI) is more beneficial in melanoma patients with elevated LDH because prospective studies in this area are lacking. Methods This multicentre retrospective cohort study was conducted at 25 melanoma centres worldwide to analyse progression-free survival (PFS) and overall survival (OS) among melanoma patients with elevated LDH. The role of confounders was addressed by using inverse probability of treatment weighting. Results Among 173 BRAFV600-mutant …