Anal and cervical cancer info in Toronto

[Guest guest]

I think that everyone with HIV, man and woman, gay or straight, needs to get themselves checked for anal cancer.

I fly to New York city to see Dr Goldstone in Chelsea since he is one of the top experts on anal cancer in the country. He uses a solution of vinegar and water in your rectum to see where the potential lesions are. Cancer tissue "shines" differently after being exposed to vinegar under infrared light. He detected two pre-cancerous lesions and removed them. I go to see him once a year just to make sure everything is OK.

Info presented in Toronto (thanks to AIDSMap.org)

Anal cancer

An analysis of the French Database of HIV shows that the the incidence of anal cancers has increased since potent HIV therapy became available. In the era before effective HIV therapy there were 16 cases of anal cancer per 100,000 patient years; this had increased to 62 per 100,000 years in the period 1999 - 2003.

Over two-thirds of the cases were in gay or bisexual men. The probably of surviving three years after a diagnosis of anal cancer was 75%. The investigators believe that the increase in anal cancer since the introduction of effective HIV therapy is because people who are infected with high-risk types of HPV are living long enough to progress to it. They call for HIV-positive patients to be screened for early signs of anal cancer

Cervical cancer

93% of HIV-positive in a Zambian study had cell abnormalities or lesions indicative of pre-cancerous or cancer changes in the cervix. In addition, 85% of the 150 in the study were infected with strains of HPV associated with a high-risk of cervical cancer.

The researchers believe that the high prevalence of cervical abnormalities seen in the study could be partly due to the low CD4 cell counts of women in the study (mean 161 cells/mm3), and although 75% of the women were taking antiretroviral therapy, most had only been doing so for six months or less. Infection with high risk types of HPV increased the risk of cervical abnormalities twelve-fold.

The investigators emphasised the need to develop cervical cancer screening and treatment programmes for HIV-positive women in resource-limited countries.

Regards, Vergelpowerusa dot org