Neuropsychological functioning of HIV-infected males

This article presents a Meta-Analysis of previous HIV-related neuropsychological research and new data from a study with methodological improvements over early investigations. In this study, the authors compared neuropsychological testing for three groups of adult male homosexuals: (a) HIV seronegative controls (n = 30), (b) HIV seropositive non-AIDS subjects (n = 27), and (c) diagnosed AIDS patients (n = 26). Groups were matched for age, education, and handedness, and subjects with other neurobehavioral risk factors were excluded. Subjects with AIDS performed worse than other groups on all tests, with 80% showing clinical impairment. HIV seropositive non-AIDS subjects differed from controls on 3 of 14 tests, with 33% showing clinical impairment. Group differences remained significant even after covarying for psychological distress, using the General Severity Index (GSI) of the Symptom Checklist-90-Revised as the covariate. These results are discussed in reference to findings from the Meta-Analysis of previous research and implications for future research.