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HIV Sufferers Have Double The Cancer Risk

Dec 21, 2008 by TacticularCancer.com

A study which was recently conducted at the John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health has found that people who have HIV have a higher risk of getting cancer.

Presented recently at the American Association for Cancer Research, the study, which had looked at 11 previous American and international studies on the subject, found that people who had HIV were twice as likely to develop cancer, as compared to the general population.

Meredith Shiels, an epidemiologist at the said school, stated that her study was not able to reveal which types of cancer posed the highest risks, nor provide the reasons why HIV patients were at higher risk for certain types of cancer.

It seems that previous studies on the topic had already shown that HIV patients had greater risks for getting several cancers – anal, head and neck, liver and lung cancers.

As for why HIV patients were at higher risk, different theories are expounded by different people. According to Shiels, it could be something to do with cancer-causing viruses being able to thrive in immune systems weakened by HIV. But it could also be due to other risk factors for cancer with are associated with HIV patients, for example smoking.