How I treat How I

Over the past 10 years, significant prog-ress has been made in understanding HIV-associated lymphomas and improv-ing the prognosis of these diseases. With the advent of combination antiretroviral therapy and the development of novel therapeutic strategies, most patients with HIV-associated lymphomas are cured. The outcome for the majority of patients with HIV-associated diffuse large B-cell lym-phoma and Burkitt lymphoma in particu-lar, is excellent, with recent studies sup-porting the role of rituximab in these diseases. Indeed, in the combination anti-retroviral therapy era, the curability of many patients with HIV-associated lym-phoma is similar to their HIV-negative counterparts. New treatment frontiers need to focus on improving the outcome for patients with advanced immune sup-pression and for those with adverse tu-mor biology, such as the activated B-cell type of diffuse large B-cell lymphoma and the virally driven lymphomas. Future clini-cal trials need to investigate novel tar-geted agents alone and in combination with chemotherapy. (Blood. 2012;119(14): 3245-3255