May 7, 2008

Antiretrovirals Vital in Treating Cancer

Antireteroviral (ARV) treatment and chemotherapy, more than any other factors, substantially increase the odds that a person with Kaposi’s sarcoma (KS)—a type of skin cancer common with HIV—will see their cancer improve and even go away, say the authors of a study published in the May 11 issue of AIDS.

Huong Nguyen, PhD, RN, from the Department of Epidemiology at the University of Washington in Seattle, and her colleagues examined the medical records of people living with HIV who were being treated at the university’s HIV clinic. They identified 64 people who were confirmed to have KS. All were men, and 31 percent had a more serious stage of KS, which when aggressive spreads to the lungs and intestines or causes ulcers and swelling.

Nguyen’s team found that approximately half of the people diagnosed with KS had complete resolution—meaning that all KS lesions disappeared—within 36 months.
When Nguyen's team looked only at improvement of KS, they found that people taking ARV treatment were four times as likely to see improvement as people not taking ARV treatment—regardless of their viral load or CD4 counts—and that people using chemotherapy were more than five times as likely to see improvement as people not using chemotherapy. When the team looked only at resolution of KS, however, only the use of ARV treatment was associated with it, again regardless of CD4 count or viral load. People taking ARV treatment were six times as likely to have resolution of their KS as people not taking ARV treatment.

Search: Kaposi's sarcoma, chemotherapy, cancer, Huong Nguyen, University of Washington

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cj, atlanta, 2008-05-07 20:20:15
This is great news. I am battling KS and currently undergoing chemo treatments. I have just started ARVs this month. I have seen great improvement since being chemo