Interstitial pneumonia probably associated with sorafenib treatment: An alert of an adverse event

There has been no literature which reports a case of interstitial lung disease associated with sorafenib. However, a recent post-marketing survey in Japan revealed that interstitial pneumonia occurred in 4 among approximately 2 000 Japanese patients treated with sorafenib. In this article, we describe a Japanese patient with severe interstitial pneumonia probably caused by sorafenib treatment for metastatic renal cell carcinoma. Oncologists supervising future clinical trials for lung cancer should be alert to the fact that sorafenib can potentially induce serious interstitial lung disease, although this might depend on racial differences.