Lung cancer and HIV

Abstract

BACKGROUND: People, living with HIV, have a greater chance of malignancies especially with the success of antiretroviral therapy, and non-AIDS-defining cancers have become the most common cause of death after AIDS and the most common of them is the lung cancer in developed countries. AIM: To research nosological characteristics of lung cancer in the context of HIV infection, HIV-associated risk factors during antiretroviral therapy and compare with global trends of this problem. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Retrospectively were analyzed the medical documentation of 98 patients with lung cancer and HIV-infection, who were in database and received specialized treatment in Saint Petersburg from 2008 to 2018 years. RESULTS: The population was dominated by patients of young (1844 years old) and middle (4559 years old) ages, 45.9% and 42.9%, respectively, and 11.2% of elderly patients (6074 years old), p 0.001, which satisfies the global data of earlier incidence of lung cancer in people living with HIV. Adenocarcinomas were more common histological subtype of lung cancer as in the general population (p 0.001). There was no static significance between high viral load and lung cancer, which can indicate the absence of a direct mechanism of HIV-carcinogenesis (90.8% of patients with low and medium viral load, p 0.001). Nevertheless, the prevalence of 4-stage of HIV infection among lung cancer patients (p 0.001) indicates a history of inflammatory diseases, including pulmonary diseases, as a result of induced immunosuppression due to CD8+-lymphocyte dysfunction and the formation of a micro-tumor environment, which can be a prognostic unfavorable factor in the occurrence of lung cancer in this group of patients , as well as indirect mechanism of viral carcinogenesis. The presence of elderly patients (11.2%, MAX71 years) indirectly indicates an increasing of period of life expectancy among this category of patients in Russia. CONCLUSION: The mechanisms of increased risk of lung cancer among HIV-infected people remain largely unclear and can be the area for active research. HIV-infected patients with lung cancer are younger than HIV-negative patients and have more advanced stages of cancer with a prevalence of adenocarcinoma type of cancer. The lung cancer prognosis of survival in HIV-infected people is much worse than that of persons without HIV-infection, but it is not fully known whether this is due to a more aggressive course of the disease, disparities in treatment, treatment resistance, or a greater risk and toxicity of therapy.