Abstract:
There is a greater need to understand the neuropsychological profile of older HIV-infected
individuals. Despite the inception of antiretroviral medication, milder forms of
neuropsychological impairments appear to exist. Furthermore, the neuropsychological
impairments seen in healthy older adults seem to have a similar pattern to those seen in HIV
patients. The current exploratory study set out to compare the global and specific
neuropsychological profiles of older HIV positive individuals (experimental group) to older
HIV negative individuals (control group). The quasi-experimental design was employed to
preliminarily assess for possible significant differences in the relevant neurocognitive
domains. Participants were recruited by convenience sampling from a primary health care
center in a semi-urban community. The neuropsychological battery used included the
Dementia Rating Scale-2, Symbol Digit Modalities Test, Stroop Color and Word Test and the
Delis-Kaplan Executive Function System. The sample size used for data analysis was 50
(experimental group: n=33; control group: n=17).Mann-Whitney U tests were used to
compare the groups, with the aid of the bootstrap resampling technique. Results indicated that
the HIV positive group showed significantly poorer performance on measures of executive
function, psychomotor processing, memory, visuo-spatial/constructional ability and global
neurocognitive function. Future studies on the older HIV positive population should be
conducted - with more detailed neuropsychological tests and larger samples. A better
understanding of the neuropsychological profile of the older cohort may have possible
treatment policy implications which will contribute to better health and quality of life
outcomes.
