weeks after the onset of osimertinib administration, with a bone marrow biopsy yielding a diagnosis of severe aplastic anemia. Symptoms of drug-induced aplastic anemia have been found to develop from days to months after initiation of treatment with the offending drug. 4 The present patient had taken L. bifidus, ethyl icosapentate, eldecalcitol, lansoprazole, amlodipine, and sitagliptin phosphate hydrate for more than 2 years, with none of these agents having previously been associated with aplastic anemia. Osimertinib was therefore most likely the cause of aplastic anemia in the proband, although other causes cannot be completely ruled out. As far as we are aware, this would be the first report of a case of osimertinib-induced severe aplastic anemia.Aplastic anemia is a rare hematopoietic stem cell disorder that results in pancytopenia and hypocellularity of bone marrow and can be acquired, hereditary, or idiopathic. Acquired aplastic anemia has been causally associated with many agents including drugs. The three major causes of acquired aplastic anemia are direct toxicity, metabolitedriven toxicity, and immune-mediated mechanisms, 5 with the pathogenesis of osimertinib-associated aplastic anemia being unknown. Other EGFR TKIs have not been found to induce irreversible bone marrow failure, suggesting that EGFR inhibition itself is not a cause of aplastic anemia.In conclusion, physicians should be aware of the risk for aplastic anemia in patients treated with osimertinib. Such patients should therefore be monitored carefully, and the frequency of this severe adverse effect should be determined.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.