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Mild cognitive dysfunction in physically asymptomatic HIV infection: recent research evidence and professional implications

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 April 2020

M Maj*
Affiliation:
Department of Psychiatry, First Medical School, University of Naples, Naples, Italy
*
**Correspondence and reprints: Clinica Psichiatrica, Primo Policlinico Universitario, Largo Madonna delle Grazie, I-80138 Napoli, Italy

Summary

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Cognitive abnormalities may occur in the physically asymptomatic phases of the infection with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), and poor education may represent a risk factor for their development. These abnormalities are usually mild, and apparently do not affect subjects’ daily living performance, although this notion should be regarded as preliminary, due to the present primitive stage of development of the instruments which assess functioning in daily living activities. The above evidence has emerged from the cross-sectional phase of the WHO Neuropsychiatric AIDS Study, carried out in the five geographic areas predominantly affected by the HIV epidemic (sub-Saharian Africa, Latin America, North America, South-East Asia, Western Europe), on subject samples that are representative of the whole population of HIV-infected persons living in those areas. The professional implications of HIV-associated early cognitive dysfunction are open to research: for example the current debate on the impact of dysfunction on aviation-related skills emphasizes the need for test batteries with a higher predictive potential than those presently available.

Type
Editorial
Copyright
Copyright © Elsevier, Paris 1993

Footnotes

*

This paper is based on plenary lectures presented by the author at the VIII International Conference on AIDS, Amsterdam, July 23, 1992, and at the Symposium on “Neuroscience of HIV Infection”, Vienna, June 4, 1993.

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