People with HIV and Cancer Also Benefit from Immunotherapy

An important area of medical progress in recent years, immunotherapy aims to treat cancer using the body’s own immune system. Clinical trials have generally excluded HIV-positive patients because of concerns that they might be more susceptible to immune adverse effects. New research suggests that these patients can also benefit.

In 2019 and 2020, immunotherapy-containing cancer clinical trials excluded HIV-positive people in 74% of cases. A recent retrospective analysis suggests immunotherapy can be safe and effective in this population. It included 390 people with HIV and 10 different cancers, with varied CD4-positive T-cell counts and HIV viral loads.

The primary outcome was overall survival, and secondary outcomes included immune-related adverse effects and disease-free survival. Researchers found that people with HIV experienced immune-related adverse effects at a similar rate and of similar types to other patients. The results also support avoiding an arbitrary CD4-cell-count threshold for immunotherapy use in people with HIV.

The findings support including people with HIV in immunotherapy clinical trials. Researchers acknowledge limitations, including the ability to track HIV viral-load trends and missing information on certain tumour-specific biomarkers.

These findings could improve treatment options and quality of life for people living with HIV and different cancers. However, formal comparisons with the general patient population require further research in large, matched groups of patients with HIV and other cancer types.

In conclusion, the findings emphasise multidisciplinary care and further research to understand immunity’s role in outcomes for people with HIV and cancer. These promising developments may enable more effective use of immunotherapy in their cancer treatment. Important work to improve these patients’ lives continues, with hope for further progress.