A 62-year-old man with hepatocellular carcinoma began to take tyrosine kinase inhibitor (TKI) lenvatinib orally. After taking the medicine for a week, the patient developed watery diarrhea 2 to 3 times a day. The patient received the first dose of tislelizumab. After 20 days, the patient’s diarrhea worsened, nearly 40 times a day. Lenvatinib was discontinued and the second dose of tislelizumab was received, while the diarrhea was not significantly relieved. Treatments were given upon the symptoms and diarrhea was alleviated so that lenvatinib was restarted, diarrhea aggravated again and the drug was discontinued. Acute colitis complicated with colon erosion was diagnosed by colonoscopy which was presumed to be immure-associated colitis caused by programmed cell death protein 1 (PD-1). The patient was admitted to hospital for liver transplantation. After the administration of immunosuppressive drugs against graft rejection, the diarrhea gradually cleared. Diarrhea caused by anti-PD-1 antibody is usually mild. In this case, mild diarrhea caused by TKI developed rapidly into severe colitis after the first dose of anti-PD-1 antibody. Mechanism of the increasing rate of adverse effect caused by the combined use of TKI and anti-PD-1 antibodies worth further discussion.
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