HIV-AIDS Cure News 2017: Smokers With HIV More Likely to Die of Lung Cancer

Advances in retroviral treatment led to drugs that now let HIV patients lead relatively-normal, AIDS-free lives. They are still more susceptible to cancer and other diseases, however; so much that smokers with HIV are more like to die of lung cancer than AIDS, as a recent study found.

Patients in the United States have improving access to anti-retroviral therapies when they enter HIV care in the country, but no amount of HIV medication can stop smokers from succumbing to lung cancer at a higher rate than their HIV-free counterparts.

It's become prevalent enough that lung cancer is now the leading cause of death among HIV patients, according to a recent study.

Smokers with HIV now have much more to fear from lung cancer rather than AIDS, as they are somewhere between six and thirteen times more likely to die of the former, as AIDS Map recaps the results.

Stopping smoking has a definite effect on the outcome, as well. For heavy smokers who drop the habit by the time they turn 40, the risk drops by more than 20 percent. Light smokers reduce their risk by more than 14 percent, as well.

This is from a combination of the general effectiveness of anti-HIV treatments, and from the fact that HIV, in general, makes its hosts more susceptible to cancer.

People with HIV are more than a thousand times more likely to contract Kaposi's sarcoma, a form of cancer that is related to viral infections. They are more than 70 times more likely to become positive for non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, too, as Jamaica Observer points out.

Women with HIV are also five times more likely to get cervical cancer, as well. There is such a persistent link between HIV infection and cancer that experts are calling for a collaboration between specialists in the two fields of AIDS and cancer research.