What Are the Risk Factors for Castleman Disease?
A risk factor is anything that might change a person’s chance of getting a disease. But having a risk factor, or even several, doesn’t mean that you will get the disease, and having few or no risk factors doesn’t mean you won’t get the disease.
Most patients with Castleman disease (CD) don’t have any known risk factors.
The only clear risk factor for CD is infection with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. The multicentric form of Castleman disease is much more common in people with HIV infection, particularly in those who have developed AIDS. This might be because these people tend to have weakened immune systems, which allows for the growth of another virus known as HHV-8 (see “ Do we know what causes Castleman disease?”). It’s not clear if people who have weakened immune systems for other reasons are also at increased risk.
The American Cancer Society medical and editorial content team
Our team is made up of doctors and master’s-prepared nurses with deep knowledge of cancer care as well as journalists, editors, and translators with extensive experience in medical writing.
Last Medical Review: July 7, 2014 Last Revised: May 23, 2016
American Cancer Society medical information is copyrighted material. For reprint requests, please see our Content Usage Policy.