Martin EM, Pitrak DL, Mullane KM, Pursell KJ, Novak RM, Carson VL, Arruda J, Somerville J, Stern RA; National Conference on Women & HIV.

Natl Conf Women HIV Natl Conf Women HIV Innov Care Policy Prev 1997 Los Angel Calif. 1997 May 4-7; 162 (abstract no. P1.28).

University of Illinois, Department of Psychiatry, Chicago, IL.

Objective: Computerized measures of reaction time have been used successfully to detect subclinical HIV-related motor and mental slowing in gay men and male injection drug users, but have not been studied in HIV-seropositive women. The purpose of this preliminary study was to evaluate reaction time performance in HIV-seropositive women and seronegative female controls. Methods: 55 HIV-seropositive and 43 seronegative women with varying risk factors participated in the study. The HIV-seropositive group included 33 clinically asymptomatic and 22 symptomatic women with no history of dementia or neurologic opportunistic disease. Seropositive and seronegative groups had comparable ethnic composition, prevalence of drug abuse and prevalence of a positive psychiatric history. Participants completed computerized measures of simple and choice reaction time which have been studied previously in HIV-seropositive men but not in women. Results: Symptomatic HIV-seropositive women had significantly slower simple (p is less than .001) and choice (p is less than .005) reaction times compared to women in the seronegative control group. Asymptomatic seropositive women as a group showed no overall impairment on either task, but a subgroup of asymptomatic women had abnormally slow choice RTs compared to controls (p is less than .05). Approximately 5% of seronegative women, 23% of asymptomatic women, and 57% of symptomatic women showed abnormally long choice reaction times (p is less than .005). Differences between groups on the RT tasks could not be attributed to age, education, psychiatric or substance abuse history. Conclusions: Computerized reaction time tasks have been employed to investigate the cognitive mechanisms of HIV-related mental slowing and as outcome measures in clinical trials of antiretroviral agents. We found evidence of subclinical motor and mental slowing in symptomatic women and subtle decreases in mental speed in a subgroup of asymptomatic women compared with seronegative controls. These findings parallel those of RT studies of HIV-seropositive males and suggest that RT tasks can be employed usefully in studies of neurocognitive functioning of HIV-seropositive women.

Publication Types:

• Meeting Abstracts

Keywords:

• Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome
• Anti-HIV Agents
• Anti-Retroviral Agents
• Choice Behavior
• Female
• HIV Infections
• HIV Seropositivity
• Homosexuality
• Homosexuality, Male
• Humans
• Male
• Reaction Time
• Risk Factors

Other ID:

• 97927443

UI: 102226055

From Meeting Abstracts