Smoking tied to lung cancer in women with HIV
March 5th, 2010
Women infected with HIV or at risk of becoming infected with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, appear more likely to develop lung cancer than women in the general population, possibly because they are much more likely to smoke cigarettes, study findings hint.
People with HIV have a much higher risk for many cancers. Still, it is unclear whether HIV infection plays a role in the development of lung cancer, Dr. Alexandra M. Levine, at City of Hope National Medical Center in Duarte, California, and colleagues note in the Journal of Clinical Oncology.
To investigate, they compared lung cancer cases in 2,651 HIV-infected and 898 at-risk but uninfected women, who were 35 years old on average, with lung cancer cases estimated to occur among similarly aged women in the general population.