A lot of research has been done in the last decade to demonstrate that you can combine intensive chemotherapy and highly active antiretroviral therapies and get good outcomes. Initially, there was a big concern that if your immune system was weakened from HIV/AIDS, you might not be able to handle the chemotherapy that’s used to treat and often cure non-Hodgkin lymphoma. The second big change in AIDS-defining cancers has been figuring out how best to treat people with, for example, non-Hodgkin lymphoma. Often just starting antiretroviral therapy and getting their immune system stronger leads to improvement in the cancer. Most of them are treated with antiretroviral therapy. We still occasionally see people with newly diagnosed HIV/AIDS who have Kaposi sarcoma. There are also HIV-negative people who are on immunosuppressive drugs - for example, for a kidney transplant - who are at a higher risk for Kaposi sarcoma. There’s the classic form of Kaposi sarcoma, also called Mediterranean Kaposi sarcoma, which occurs in older adults who are not HIV infected and is generally slow growing. Kaposi sarcoma still occurs in a number of different settings. There’s a couple of different ways to look at the story. Learn more Back to top How has the treatment of AIDS-defining cancers changed over time? Now that people who are HIV infected are living into their 50s, 60s, and 70s, they’re getting all the other cancers that uninfected people tend to get if they live that long.
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That part of the epidemic has evolved over the last 20-plus years since the introduction of protease inhibitors. This includes pretty much every other type of cancer that occurs in someone who happens to be HIV infected. People with HIV can also develop what are considered non-AIDS-defining cancers. Interestingly, all of them are caused by, or associated with, viral infections - viruses separate from HIV. Those cancers were predominantly Kaposi sarcoma, lymphoma, and cervical cancer. Certain cancers were much more common in people infected with HIV starting in the 1980s. Historically, there’s been this disease category called AIDS-defining cancers. What types of cancer are more common in people with HIV/AIDS? In an interview, Mark Dickson, a medical oncologist at Memorial Sloan Kettering who specializes in treating people with sarcoma, explains what the current picture looks like. Now that effective HIV-suppressing medications exist, the landscape of AIDS-related cancers is changing. They cannot fight off cancer as well as healthy people can. Scientists now know that cancer sometimes occurs in HIV-infected people because their immune system is severely weakened.
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For a time, before the term “acquired immune deficiency syndrome” was coined, the mysterious new illness was dubbed the “gay cancer.” This type of cancer was not previously known to affect men at such a young age or be this aggressive. Called Kaposi sarcoma, it appeared as purple blotches on the skin, often on the legs and face.
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When the AIDS epidemic began in 1981, many of the first reported cases were young gay men who were diagnosed with a rare form of cancer. This association has changed over the years, as drugs to control HIV infection have become available.
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People with HIV are sometimes susceptible to getting specific types of cancer.