Mediterranean Diet Correlates With Responses to Melanoma Immunotherapy

Source: Cancer Network, March 2023

A habitual Mediterranean diet may have a role in improving responses to immune checkpoint blockade as therapy for advanced melanoma, according to findings from a cohort study published in JAMA Oncology.

An alternative Mediterranean diet positively correlated with progression-free survival at 12 months (PFS-12; probability of 0.74; P = .01; false discovery rate [FDR], .021; effective degrees of freedom [edf], 1.54) as well as overall response rate (ORR; probability of 0.77; P = .02; FDR, .032; edf, 0.83).

“A Mediterranean dietary pattern is associated with positive responses to immune checkpoint blockade, a relatively new and successful treatment against severe cancers,” lead author Laura A. Bolte, MSc, a dietician and MD/PhD candidate of the Department of Gastroenterology and Hepatology at the University of Groningen and University Medical Center Groningen in the Netherlands, stated in a written comment to CancerNetwork®. “These [immune checkpoint blockade] drugs cause the immune system to recognize, clear and destroy cancer cells.”
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