Abstract
HIV infection has been associated with an increased risk of cancer development and Kaposi's sarcoma, non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, and invasive cervical cancers have been a manifestation of AIDS. With the advent of antiretroviral therapy, a collateral appearance of non-AIDS defining cancers (NADC) has been observed in HIV positive patients. From January 1997 to December 2022, we performed an observational cross-sectional study, involving HIV-infected outpatients with both AIDS-defining cancers (ADC) and NADC, followed up in a tertiary hospital in Italy. Overall, 153 cases of malignancy were observed, with a higher percentage of NADC (60.8 %) rather than ADC (39.2 %). Mean age at tumour diagnosis was significantly lower for ADC than for NADC in HIV positive individuals (p-value= 0.001). No statistical difference was found between the mean values of zenith HIV-RNA and CD4 count in HIV outpatients with cancer and in those without cancer, while a statistically significant difference was found between the HIV-RNA zenith in HIV outpatients with ADC as compared with NADC (10.2 copies/mL versus 8.1 copies/mL; p-value= 0.007). Our study revealed a considerably high proportion of non-AIDS defining malignancies in HIV individuals, emphasizing the need to improve the management of these cancer patients at follow up according to the risk profiles and the changing epidemiology.
Published Version
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