What Are The triggers of HIV Anal Cancer?

US research shows that HIV therapy can effectively control viral load and reduces the risk of anal cancer. The retrospective study involved nearly 29,000 men who were taking a combination anti-retroviral therapy – men with viral suppression for a minimum of 60 percent of the time, whilst receiving treatment were around 50 percent less likely to develop anal cancer, compared to men with poor virological control. The study was published in the online edition of the Journal of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndromes. The study shows that suppressing HIV viral load with an effective combination anti-retroviral therapy, or cART, can almost half the risk of developing anal cancer. Ensuring undetectable viral load control with cART utilisation could be a key aspect of the prevention of squamous cell cancers of the anus in HIV-infected people.

Evidence suggests that the rates of anal cancer are much higher in people with HIV, compared to the general population. Cancer is still very rare in people with HIV, but studies show that the incidences have increased since combination anti-retroviral therapy has become available. This is due to the people with pre-cancerous cell changes being associated with high-risk strains of HPV, or human papillomavirus, who are living long enough to enable the cancer cells to develop. A retrospective study using male participants who received care during 1985 to 2009 highlighted the evidence to back this theory.

Researchers restricted the analysis to individuals with a history of combination HIV treatment in order to see which factors were linked to the risk of anal cancer. The study involved 45,231 men, with a total of 307, 495 person years of follow-up and 377 cases of anal cancer. This is the first large study to show that maintaining undetectable viral load reduces the risk of anal cancer. Researchers confirm that these findings are limited by the retrospective design of the study, but that the results do offer support for initiating cART at higher CD4 cell counts and maintaining suppressed HIV viral loads.