Objective: To evaluate the impact of immune recovery induced by highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART) on the survival of AIDS patients with primary central nervous system lymphoma (PCNSL).
Methods: In a multicentric retrospective analysis, 29 HIV-infected patients with histologically confirmed PCNSL were identified. To evaluate median survival, Kaplan-Meier statistics were used. To explore the effects of different variables on survival, a Weibull accelerated failure time regression analysis was performed.
Results: Median age at manifestation of PCNSL was 39.1 years and median CD4 cell count was 11 x 10(6) cells/l. Seventy per cent of the patients had had a prior AIDS-defining illness. Cranial radiation (CR) was given to 12 out of 29 patients. Six patients were treated with HAART. Survival time of these patients and of the patients treated with CR alone differed significantly from those receiving neither CR nor HAART (median Kaplan-Meier survival estimate: 1093, 132, and 33 days, respectively). In the multivariate regression model, HAART and CR were identified as the only variables independently associated with prolonged survival. HAART versus no HAART and CR versus no CR increased the time to event by a factor of 6.1 (95% confidence interval, 2.4-16.0; P = 0.0002) and 3.1 (95% confidence interval, 1.5-6.3; P = 0.002), respectively. Four out of six patients on HAART showed a marked immune recovery and survived for more than 1.5 years, with two patients still alive.
Conclusion: Data from this cohort indicate that immune recovery induced by HAART leads to dramatic improvement in survival of patients with AIDS-associated PCNSL. These findings may have important implications for future treatment strategies.