HIV patients 'more likely to develop cancer'

Thursday, 31 July 2003 12:00 AM

Without treatment with modern anti-retroviral drugs, HIV patients are 11 times more likely to develop cancer than the general population, new research from Scotland has shown.

The research backs up previous evidence of a correlation between HIV and certain cancers known to be linked to the virus.

But the scientists from the Universities of Strathclyde and Glasgow and the Scottish Cancer Registry in Edinburgh also discovered a link with other cancers, including lung, liver and skin cancer.

This "valuable insight" into the types of cancers linked to HIV, "will help doctors to monitor the health of today's HIV patients, who are at least fortunate enough to have the benefit of anti-retroviral drugs", Richard Sullivan, head of clinical programmes for Cancer Research UK has noted.

The researchers studied the records of 2 574 people diagnosed with HIV in Scotland, between 1981 and 1996 - when anti-retroviral drugs were first introduced.

As anticipated the group was at increased risk of developing AIDS-defining cancers. These patients were 100 times more likely to develop non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, and over 2000 times more likely to develop Kaposi's sarcoma (an otherwise rare skin cancer).

In general, HIV patients were 11 times more likely to develop cancer, although this increased risk was not uniform across the group. Haemophiliacs and heterosexuals ran five times the risk suffered by population as a whole, but this jumped to 21 times higher than normal for homosexual and bisexual men.

But most intriguing was the increased likelihood of HIV patients developing several cancers previously not regarded as 'AIDS-defining'. The risk of lung cancer quadrupled among HIV patients; the risk of liver cancer went up by 22 times; and the risk of skin cancer (not including Kaposi's sarcoma) tripled.

Dr Sullivan explains that the correlation between cancer and HIV is a result of the way the virus disables the immune system, possibly preventing the immune system from recognising and attacking cancer cells.

An alternative explanation could be that HIV patients smoke more or have greater exposure to other viruses such as Hepatitis B and C, lead author Dr Gwen Allardice adds.

The groups points to the need to monitor the effectiveness of anti-retroviral drugs, to determine whether cancer rates among current HIV patients are still relatively high.

The research is published in the British Journal of Cancer, which is owned by Cancer Research UK.

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