As the HIV population ages during the era of effective treatments for the virus, the cancer burden will shift away from those associated with AIDS and toward those associated with aging, Medscape reports.


Researchers used statistical modeling to estimate the size of the HIV population by age and calendar year, spanning 2006 to 2030, and calculated projected cancer diagnosis rates among them based on past data from the National Cancer Institute HIV/AIDS Cancer Match Study and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). They presented their findings at the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) 2017 Annual Meeting in Washington, DC. Their projections assume that current trends will persist.

In 2006, an estimated 4.1 percent of the HIV population was older than 65, a proportion that is expected to swell to 21.4 percent by 2030.

The researchers estimated that the total number of HIV-positive people living with cancer will decline from 7,900 in 2010 to 6,495 in 2030. AIDS-defining cancers will fall over time, such that the most common cancers among people with HIV in 2030 will be prostate (1,624 cases), lung (786 cases), liver (498 cases), anal (447 cases) and non–Hodgkin lymphoma (429 cases).

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