HIV and HIV dementia.

Abstract

Long before the discovery of the human immunodeficiency viruses, HTV-1 and HIV-2, studies with visna virus and other lentiviruses of ruminants established that neuroinvasiveness and neuroviru-lence are a characteristic of lentiviral infections (Nathanson, 1998). Soon after the first descriptions of the acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS), landmark studies by Price and others (Price et al, 1988) established the importance of neurological symptomatology in a significant proportion of HIV infected individuals. The neurological deterioration attributed to HIV infection itself (as opposed to the problems associated with opportunistic infection) has been described extensively in many reviews, but can be briefly summarized as a subcortical dementia, differing from cortical dementias by the tendency for memory impairment to occur after other cognitive symptoms like inattention, indifference, and psychomotor slowing (reviewed in Atwood et al, 1993; McArthur et al, 1994), and by prominent motor abnormalities ...