Cancer risk and use of protease inhibitor or nonnucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitor-based combination antiretroviral therapy: the D: A: D study. Journal of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndromes
Bruyand et al. assessed the association between combination antiretroviral therapy (cART) and cancer risk. They found that longer exposure to both nonnucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitors (NNRTI) and protease inhibitor (PI) based cART was associated with a lower risk of AIDS-defining cancers (ADC). In contrast, PI use was associated with a higher Non-AIDS-defining cancer (NADC) risk, which was mainly driven by an association with anal cancer. Each additional year of exposure to PI-based cART was associated with a 2% increase in NADC risk.
These study results suggest that a cumulative use of PIs could be associated with a higher risk of invasive anal cancer, and possibly other NADC.