There are available lots of treatments for patients with AIDS-related lymphoma, some are being currently in use and some are being tested in clinical trials. Patients may agree to take part in clinical trials, because they help improve the standard treatments and even develop new ones. The NCI Web site has information available on clinical trials. Those might help in deciding which is the most appropriate cancer treatment along with the family, patient and the health care team.

Patients with AIDS-related lymphoma must be treated with lower doses of drugs because their immune system is weakened. There are used drugs which treat infections and highly-active antiretroviral therapy is used against HIV. AIDS-related lymphoma is harder to treat and has a higher spread through the body. Procedures and tests are recommended during the staging process. Lymphoma related to AIDS is usually in an advanced stage when diagnosed. Tests have been done to see if lymphoma has spread to the lymph system or to other parts of the body. This way it may be determined the stage of the cancer, which is important in order to direct the treatment.

Standard treatments are:

Chemotherapy: is a cancer treatment that uses drugs to stop the growing of the cancer cells either by killing cells or by stopping them to divide, the drugs in chemotherapy may be either taken by mouth or injected into a vein or muscle, or placed in the spinal column. The treatment with chemotherapy may be combined with other anticancer drugs depending on the type and stage of the cancer. If the lymphoma is in the central nervous system chemotherapy should be used intrathecal, to prevent the possible side effects given by the chemotherapy on the bone marrow colony-stimulating factors are administered with the chemotherapy.

Another treatment is radiation therapy which uses high energy x-rays to kill cancer cells. The radiation may be administered either by internal way using substances or by external way from a machine.

Destroyed cells( by chemotherapy) in the blood are replaced with stem cells, which are stored frozen after high-dose chemotherapy, stem cells are given to the patient through an infusion.

New types of treatment that are being tested –monoclonal antibody therapy

The therapy with monoclonal antibodies is a cancer treatment which has been developed in the last years. It consists of antibodies that made in laboratory from one type of cell in the immune system and given by infusion. They may be used alone or in combination with drugs, toxins, radioactive material. Those antibodies fix on one type of cell and stop it from dividing, growing or kill it. Groshan Fabiola