Newsday - February 29, 1992
Laurie Garrett
A team of New York researchers has reported that the virus responsible for genital warts may also cause Kaposi's sarcoma, the deadly skin cancer seen in some people with AIDS.
In today's issue of the British medical journal Lancet, Dr. Alvin Friedman-Kien of New York University Medical Center and his colleagues announced they had found human papilloma virus in the Kaposi's sarcoma cancer cells of New York homosexual men with AIDS, as well as gay men who had Kaposi's sarcoma without being HIV positive.
Friedman-Kien said he believed this physical and social evidence strongly suggest the virus causes Kaposi's.
Before the AIDS epidemic, Kaposi's sarcoma was extremely rare. But a virulent type has been found in about 20 percent of U.S. homosexual men with AIDS, although it is still rare among U.S. women or heterosexual men with AIDS.
In Africa, however, men and women with AIDS appear equally likely to develop Kaposi's sarcoma. This suggested the cancer was not caused by the AIDS virus, and researchers have been searching for some other sexually transmitted virus as a cause.
Now, Friedman-Kien said, human papilloma virus researchers will turn to the Kaposi's sarcoma problem and it may be possible to find more effective therapies for the cancer.
Human papilloma virus is known to cause cervical cancer in women, genital warts in both men and women and anal warts in homosexual men. The virus was seen in the cancer cells of 11 out of 69 gay men with AIDS and three of 11 gay men who were HIV negative. Those rates are comparable to those seen in women with cervical cancer.
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