Castleman Disease Risk Factors

A risk factor is anything that might change a person’s chance of getting a disease. Some risk factors, like smoking, can be changed. Others, like a person’s age or family history, can’t be changed. But having a risk factor, or even several, doesn’t mean that a person will get the disease. And, many people who get the disease may have few or no known risk factors.

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 the growth of another virus known as HHV-8 (see What Causes Castleman Disease?). It’s not clear if people who have weakened immune systems for other reasons are also at higher risk.