Grant: Project Grant

Though there have been many improvements in the health of those living with HIV since the mid 1990s when effective therapies first emerged including reductions in AIDS-associated cancers, there have been increases in other types of cancer since that time. One category of these is cancers caused by human papillomavirus (HPV). HPV is the main cause of anal cancer, and gay, bisexual, and other men who have sex with men (gbMSM) have rates of anal cancer up to 100 times higher than the general population. Despite this, there are currently no clear guidelines for anal cancer screening in gbMSM living with HIV, the currently available screening tools do not perform particularly well, and there are very few clinics and health care providers trained in providing these services. As such, there is an urgent need to investigate ways to better provide anal cancer screening to this at-risk population. One of the ways to do this is to develop and examine different tests that can predict the presence of lesions in the anal canal that may lead to cancer (called high-grade dysplasia, or anal precancers). These are called biomarkers, and there are several that have not been adequately examined as possible predictors of anal cancers and pre-cancers in gbMSM living with HIV. The proposed study will recruit participants from an existing set of Canadian studies to examine these novel biomarkers as predictors of anal pre-cancers.