Malignancies in HIV: pre- and post-highly active antiretroviral therapy

A study was conducted at a large metropolitan tertiary-care teaching hospital to investigate the incidence of cancers among HIV-infected patients over a 13-year period.

Retrospective cohort study.

A retrospective cohort study was conducted among HIV-infected patients diagnosed with cancer between January 1990 and December 2003 at a large metropolitan teaching hospital. Any HIV-infected patient who also had a confirmed diagnosis of Kaposi's sarcoma, primary central nervous system lymphoma, invasive cervical cancer or non-Hodgkin's lymphoma was categorized as having AIDS-defining cancer (ADC) according to the CDC's initial case definition for AIDS, while patients with other malignancies were classified as having non-ADCs. A clinical database was created consisting of HIV patients diagnosed with cancer at this teaching hospital, and data were abstracted for the current project.

A total of 203 HIV-infected patients diagnosed with cancer were identified during the study period. Ninety-three cases occurred before 1995 and 110 after 1996. The median age of patients (at cancer diagnosis) in the era before highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART) was 37 years and in the post-HAART era was 43 years (p<0.05). Mean CD4 count at cancer diagnosis in the pre-HAART era was 101 cells/mm3, and 183 cells/mm3 in the post-HAART period (p<0.05). Six patients had diagnoses of both ADC and NADC during the study period. Of the 197 remaining cases, 129 (65.4%) were ADCs and 68 (34.6%) were NADCs (p<0.05). The incidence of Kaposi's sarcoma decreased significantly, while the incidence of lung cancer increased significantly.

Of 197 patients with a single diagnosis of either ADC or NADC, there was statistically a larger proportion of NADC cases diagnosed in the post-HAART period compared to the pre-HAART period. The number of ADC diagnoses decreased between the pre- and post-HAART period.