Neuropsychological Profiles of Older Adults with Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) : a comparison with controls

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.