"This could look like Alzheimer's disease in a young person," said Dr. Edmund Tramont, director of AIDS investigators at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research. "We just aren't sure when the clinical manifestations of HIV infection begin, so the smartest thing to do seems to exclude those who are infected from critical tasks. On balance it is just better to be safe than to take a risk."
Scientists have known for some time that the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) that causes AIDS enters the cental nervous system and remains there. The great majority of AIDS patients experience some mental impairment, and AIDS dementia has recently been included by the Centers for Disease Control as a manifestation of the illness.
They broke the sample into four groups: 15 with AIDS, 13 who had a less severe form of the disease, AIDS-related complex (ARC); 16 who tested positive for the AIDS virus but who showed no other symptoms, and 11 healthy men who were not infected.
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