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Kaposi's Sarcoma (KS)
Kaposi's sarcoma (KS) is a type of cancer that grows in the lining of your blood vessels and lymph vessels. The cells can form tumors on your skin and in your mouth, nose, eyes, and anus. These tumors appear on your skin as purple, brown, or red patches (also called lesions).
. These skin lesions usually appear on your face or legs and do not cause symptoms. However, KS can spread to your lungs, liver, stomach, intestines, and lymph nodes, the glands that help your body fight infection. When they're present in your digestive tract, lungs, or liver, they can be dangerous and affect your breathing or cause bleeding.
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You could have several symptoms, depending on which parts of your body are affected by the disease.
Skin
The most visible signs of KS are lesions on your skin: flat, painless patches or nodules that appear red or purple on light skin and bluish, brownish, or black on dark skin. Unlike bruises, they don't change color when you press on them. They aren't itchy, and they don't drain. They're not dangerous.
New spots may show up each week. For some people, these lesions change slowly. They may grow into raised bumps or merge together.
Mucous membranes
KS lesions can form inside your mouth and throat, causing trouble eating or swallowing. They might also happen on your eyes and under your eyelids.
Lymph nodes
When lesions block the flow of lymphatic fluid around your body, they can lead to severe swelling in your arms, legs, face, or scrotum.
Respiratory tract
Lesions inside your lungs may cause serious coughing and shortness of breath.
Digestive tract
Lesions in your stomach and intestines can lead to bleeding and blockages. You may have:
Spots or lesions on the skin are typically the first signs of KS. These lesions can be flat (called patches), raised (called plaques), or bumps (called nodules). They can range from purple, red, or brown in color and appear in one area or many areas, most commonly including the face, legs, and feet. If the lesions appear on your groin or legs, they can block the flow of fluids and lead to swelling in your feet and legs.
If your doctor suspects you have KS, they may perform a skin biopsy to look at your CD4 cell count. A low CD4 cell count can indicate KS.
There are four types of KS:
KS develops in people who've already been infected with KSHV; however, most people with the virus won't get KS.
People with HIV have weakened immune systems -- the body's main line of defense against germs and illnesses -- so they're more likely to get certain cancers, including Kaposi's sarcoma.
Most severe cases happen when someone has AIDS, but skin lesions can show up earlier. They're a sign that your immune system isn't at full strength and they can get worse if you have other infections.
You're also at risk if you've received an organ transplant or have a weakened immune system because of other factors, such as age.
Antiretroviral therapy (ART) for HIV can also treat KS, especially early on. Anti-HIV drugs have lowered the rate of KS cases by 80%-90% from the early 1980s.
KS is caused by the herpes virus HHV-8, also called KSHV. It spreads mainly through saliva, such as during sexual contact or in interactions between a mother and child.
People with healthy immune systems can carry the virus without any problems. But it triggers cancer in people with weakened immune systems.
KS affects eight times more men or people AMAB than women or people AFAB. Among people who have HIV, men or people AMAB who have sex with other men or people AMAB are more likely to have the virus and to get KS.
Additional risk factors include:
Your doctor may diagnose KS just by looking at your skin. To confirm it, they may take a sample of tissue from a spot and look at it under a microscope, which is called a biopsy. They might also do tests including:
Treatment for KS will depend on how many lesions you have, how big they are, where they are, and how well your immune system is working.
In many cases, ART is the best way to treat active KS. It may even clear up skin lesions.
If you have just a few lesions, your doctor can cut or freeze them off. It's not a cure for KS, but it can make your skin look better.
If you have lots of lesions or the virus is affecting many areas of your body, you might get radiation therapy. This kills the cancer cells or keeps them from growing. A machine directs radiation toward the lesions on your skin, or your doctor may put radioactive needles, seeds, or wires inside you near the cancer.
If KS has spread, you'll need medications that go through your whole body to kill the cancer. Chemotherapy drugs for KS include:
Chemotherapy can have side effects, including hair loss, vomiting, and fatigue. It can also lower the number of platelets and white blood cells and raise your chances of an infection.
Another type of drug treatment, called biologic therapy, works by boosting your immune system. Your doctor may prescribe interferon alfa (Intron A) if your CD4 cell count (a type of white blood cell) is over 200 and you have a fairly healthy immune system.
Clinical trials are testing targeted therapies such as monoclonal antibody therapy and tyrosine kinase inhibitors. These treatments are aimed at attacking the cancer and keeping it from growing without hurting healthy cells.
Some complications of having KS include:
Treatment can usually keep KS under control for many years. The lesions may shrink and fade, but they might not go away.
Overall, about 75% of people who have KS live at least 5 years after diagnosis. If the cancer hasn't spread, about 81% live at least 5 years after being diagnosed. In people whose cancer has spread to nearby areas, the 5-year survival rate is 65%. The rate is 47% if the cancer has spread farther away.
There's no vaccine to protect against HHV-8. The best way to avoid getting KS is to avoid things that put you at higher risk of HIV, such as having unprotected sex or injecting drugs with used needles. Medications called pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) can also make you less likely to get HIV.
If you have HIV, preventing KS should be possible with ART, especially if you start it when your CD4 count is still high. If you have advanced HIV, or AIDS, a test can tell if you also have HHV-8. ART will lower the chances that it will become KS.
If you've had an organ transplant, some anti-rejection drugs can also lower your chance of getting KS.
Kaposi's sarcoma is a rare condition that can be a symptom of HIV/AIDS or the result of taking medication after an organ transplant. There are four types of KS, and the impact on your immune system, location, number, and size of lesions can vary and determine the proper treatment. It's important to speak to your doctor as soon as you develop early signs of KS.
A New Strategy To Attack Aggressive Brain Cancer Shrank Tumors In Two Early Tests
WASHINGTON -- A new strategy to fight an extremely aggressive type of brain tumor showed promise in a pair of experiments with a handful of patients.
Scientists took patients' own immune cells and turned them into "living drugs" able to recognize and attack glioblastoma. In the first-step tests, those cells shrank tumors at least temporarily, researchers reported Wednesday.
So-called CAR-T therapy already is used to fight blood-related cancers like leukemia but researchers have struggled to make it work for solid tumors. Now separate teams at Massachusetts General Hospital and the University of Pennsylvania are developing next-generation CAR-T versions designed to get past some of glioblastoma's defenses.
"It's very early days," cautioned Penn's Dr. Stephen Bagley, who led one of the studies. But "we're optimistic that we've got something to build on here, a real foundation."
Glioblastoma, the brain cancer that killed President Joe Biden's son Beau Biden and longtime Arizona Sen. John McCain, is fast-growing and hard to treat. Patients usually live 12 to 18 months after diagnosis. Despite decades of research, there are few options when it returns after surgery and radiation.
The immune system's T cells fight disease but cancer has ways to hide. With CAR-T therapy, doctors genetically modify a patient's own T cells so they can better find specific cancer cells. Still, solid tumors like glioblastoma offer an additional hurdle — they contain mixtures of cancer cells with different mutations. Targeting just one type allows the rest to keep growing.
Mass General and Penn each developed two-pronged approaches and tried them in patients whose tumors returned after standard treatment.
At Mass General, Dr. Marcela Maus' lab combined CAR-T with what are called T-cell engaging antibody molecules — molecules that can attract nearby, regular T cells to join in the cancer attack. The result, dubbed CAR-TEAM, targets versions of a protein called EGFR that's found in most glioblastomas but not normal brain tissue.
Penn's approach was to create "dual-target" CAR-T therapy that hunts for both that EGFR protein plus a second protein found in many glioblastomas.
Both teams infused the treatment through a catheter into the fluid that bathes the brain.
Mass General tested three patients with its CAR-TEAM and brain scans a day or two later showed their tumors rapidly began shrinking, the researchers reported in the New England Journal of Medicine.
"None of us could really believe it," Maus said. "That doesn't happen."
Two of the patients' tumors began to regrow soon and a repeat dose given to one of them didn't work. But one patient's response to the experimental treatment lasted more than six months.
Similarly, Penn researchers reported in Nature Medicine that the first six patients given its therapy experienced varying degrees of tumor shrinkage. While some rapidly relapsed, Bagley said one treated in August so far hasn't seen regrowth.
For both teams, the challenge is to make it longer-lasting.
"None of this is going to matter if it doesn't last," Bagley said.
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The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute's Science and Educational Media Group. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
Leah Smith, TikTok Star Who Documented Rare Cancer On Social Media, Dead At 22
Leah Smith, a TikTok star who used the social media platform to document her battle after she was diagnosed with a rare form of cancer, died Monday. She was 22.
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Smith, from Liverpool, England, died from stage 4 Ewing sarcoma, a form of bone cancer that normally affects children, her boyfriend, Andrew Moore, announced in a video posted on Smith's TikTok page, according to the BBC.
"I'm sad to say that she passed away today around half-eleven this morning," Moore said in the video. "I just want to say thank you to everyone. All your comments did help, like, she did actually read all of them. Anyone who said anything nice ever, it means more than you realize."
According to the Johns Hopkins Medicine website, Ewing sarcoma is mostly found in a person's hip bones, ribs, femur, tibia or humerus.
Smith was first diagnosed with cancer after she lost feeling in one of her legs, Deadline reported.
She had more than 500,000 followers on TikTok, and her videos received millions of views, according to the BBC.
Smith said she wanted people viewing her videos to see "my life living with cancer -- the ups and downs of it."
On Feb. 8, Smith updated her viewers, telling them, "I had an idea but when (you're) told it still hurts so yes the cancer has spread and yes the tumors have grown."
Smith posted another video on Feb. 18, writing that things were dire.
"Update that I didn't think I ever wanted to do," she wrote. "The doctors have said there's no point trying to give me more antibiotics and fluids because it just isn't working anymore. All the pain meds aren't working so they really just want to get me to a comfortable state as much as possible.
"Idk what this means for me if this is the end of the journey but all my family have came around and I am just going to act like I'm good and great because quite frankly I am so so scared. I don't want to die yet. I'm sorry."
"We'll all miss Leah, but we'll make sure that we never forget her," Moore said in the video he posted. "I want to see everyone speaking about Leah, how amazing she is and how much she helped everyone. We'll never let Leah be forgotten."
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