HIV Digest	HIV Digest Archive

US researchers found that functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) can offer early warning of neurologic morbidity in HIV patients.

Researchers discovered that fMRI screening could detect neurologic abnormalities even in patients who have no overt symptoms of dementia. The researchers evaluated the utility of blood oxygenation level-dependent (BOLD) fMRI for finding abnormal brain activity. A group of 10 HIV patients with low CD4 cell counts underwent neuropsychological tests under fMRI. The investigators compared their results with those of age-, sex-, education-, and handedness-matched seronegative controls, according to the study.

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Although the HIV patients did not suffer from impaired test performance, BOLD fMRI showed significant increases in their lateral prefrontal cortex activation and activated brain volume, data revealed. The asymptomatic patients showed heightened activated brain volume in the lateral prefrontal cortex during all of the assigned tasks, regardless of the difficulty. The investigators found that BOLD fMRI measurements of brain activity and activated volume were similar in other regions of the brain between patients and controls.

Editor's Note: from AIDS Weekly