HIV Infection May Cause Neurological Damage Regardless of Antiretroviral Therapy Effectiveness, Study Says
November 18, 2003
HIV infection may cause damage to the brain even if the virus is suppressed to nearly undetectable levels with antiretroviral therapy, according to a study published in the Nov. 14 issue of the journal NeuroReport, the San Francisco Chronicle reports. Researchers from the University of California-San Francisco departments of psychiatry and radiology at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center conducted a battery of tests on 31 HIV-positive patients and 35 HIV-negative patients to gauge neurological damage (Russell, San Francisco Chronicle, 11/14). The researchers used neuropsychological tests and magnetic resonance imaging to test the patients' brain structure and functions (Chao et al., NeuroReport, 11/14). The researchers also tested patients' contingent negative variation amplitude -- a measure of a person's overall ability to react to something by taking physical action. Among the HIV-positive patients, both the participants who were taking antiretroviral drugs and the participants who were not taking antiretrovirals showed poor results, suggesting that they may have damage in the basal ganglia part of the brain. In addition, MRI scans showed that HIV-positive participants -- regardless of their therapy regimen -- had possible damage in the thalamus area of the brain (BBC News, 11/17). The problem of AIDS-related dementia, which once affected one in five AIDS patients, was thought to have been largely solved with the advent of antiretroviral drugs (San Francisco Chronicle, 11/14). "You see people on [antiretroviral] medications and they seem fine," Dr. Linda Chao, lead author of the study, said, adding, "But the take-home message is that antiviral medications might not be stopping brain damage. When we put patients' brains under closer scrutiny, we saw that they were affected."
This article was provided by Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. It is a part of the publication Kaiser Daily HIV/AIDS Report. Visit the Kaiser Family Foundation's website to find out more about their activities, publications and services.