People living with HIV have a greater likelihood of dying from numerous common cancers when compared with HIV-negative people, Healio reports. Publishing their findings in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, researchers culled data from the HIV/AIDS Cancer Match study’s records on 1.8 million people with 12 common cancers, focusing on six states: Colorado, Connecticut, Georgia, Michigan, New Jersey and Texas.

A total of 6,459 people in the study (0.36 percent of the total) were HIV positive, over 90 percent of whom contracted HIV before being diagnosed with cancer.

In the event that individuals were diagnosed with more than one cancer, the investigators only factored the initial diagnosed cancer into their analysis. Because Kaposi’s sarcoma is so disproportionately prevalent among people with HIV, these cases were left out of the study.

HIV-positive individuals were more likely to be diagnosed with cancer at a more advanced stage than HIV-negative people. Also, HIV-positive people were less likely to receive a first-course cancer treatment.

After adjusting for differences in cancer treatment, the researchers found that people with HIV were more likely to die from various non-AIDS-defining cancers by the following factors: colorectal cancer, 1.4-fold; lung cancer, 1.28-fold; melanoma, 1.93-fold; and breast cancer, 2.64-fold.

Among those with localized cancer, those who received standard treatment for breast cancer were 3.02 times more likely to die of breast cancer, and 1.88 times more likely to died of non-small-cell lung cancer.

To read the Healio article, click here.

To read the study abstract, click here.