Patients with AIDS are 100 times more likely to get non-Hodgkin lymphoma than the general population, and researchers have uncovered new information that suggests circulating cytokine levels may be playing a role in this increased risk, according to data presented at the American Association for Cancer Research 101st Annual Meeting 2010.

"Although medicines that fight AIDS are becoming more effective, cancer remains a real risk among these patients. We need to keep working toward understanding the mechanisms that predispose people to certain cancers," said Dr Charles S. Rabkin, senior investigator at the National Cancer Institute.

Cancer was one of the first clues that led researchers to identify AIDS in the early 1980s. Since then, researchers have been working to discover why patients with AIDS are at greater risk of cancer than the general population.

For the current study, Rabkin and colleagues used prospective cohort studies to examine prediagnostic blood samples from 66 patients with AIDS and non-Hodgkin lymphoma and 186 lymphoma-free controls. These patient groups had similar ages, racial composition and gender.

The researchers measured 30 separate cytokines and found that nine of them had significantly higher levels in patients who subsequently developed lymphoma. Researchers also examined the link between Epstein-Barr virus (EBV), a cancer-causing virus of the herpes family, and non-Hodgkin lymphoma but found no association.

"If these findings are confirmed, the next step would be to try to determine if we can modify cytokine levels in some way to make lymphoma prevention more effective in this population," said Rabkin.

Source: The American Association for Cancer Research