A case-control pilot study on cognitive functioning, symptom validity and psychological wellbeing in HIV-1-infected...

The objective of this study was to examine and relate both cognitive functioning and psychological wellbeing in Dutch HIV-1-infected patients (n = 30) in comparison with a matched healthy control group (n = 30), taking symptom validity into account. Significant differences in performance between patients and controls were found in the domain Working memory (P = 0.036), but not in the other cognitive domains. There was a significant difference in all dimensions of the psychological wellbeing scale, measured with the SCL-90-R (P values between 0.002 and 0.023), except for agoraphobia, cognitive performance difficulty and sleep disturbances. No correlations were found between the performance on the Working memory domain and wellbeing. Future research should focus on unravelling the underlying mechanisms of neurocognitive dysfunction further using neuropsychological tests, including a symptom validity test in combination with neuroimaging techniques in larger samples.