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. 2017 Jun;23(3):492-500.
doi: 10.1007/s13365-017-0523-2. Epub 2017 Mar 20.

Accelerated and accentuated neurocognitive aging in HIV infection

David P Sheppard  1 , Jennifer E Iudicello  2 , Erin E Morgan  2 , Rujvi Kamat  2 , Lindsay R Clark  3   4 , Gunes Avci  1 , Mark W Bondi  5   6 , Steven Paul Woods  7 ; HIV Neurobehavioral Research Program (HNRP) Group
Affiliations

Accelerated and accentuated neurocognitive aging in HIV infection

David P Sheppard et al. J Neurovirol. 2017 Jun.

Abstract

There is debate as to whether the neurocognitive changes associated with HIV infection represent an acceleration of the typical aging process or more simply reflect a greater accentuated risk for age-related declines. We aimed to determine whether accelerated neurocognitive aging is observable in a sample of older HIV-infected individuals compared to age-matched seronegatives and older old (i.e., aged ≥65) seronegative adults. Participants in a cross-sectional design included 48 HIV-seronegative (O-) and 40 HIV-positive (O+) participants between the ages of 50-65 (mean ages = 55 and 56, respectively) and 40 HIV-seronegative participants aged ≥65 (OO-; mean age = 74) who were comparable for other demographics. All participants were administered a brief neurocognitive battery of attention, episodic memory, speeded executive functions, and confrontation naming (i.e., Boston Naming Test). The O+ group performed more poorly than the O- group (i.e., accentuated aging), but not differently from the OO- on digit span and initial recall of a supraspan word list, consistent with an accelerating aging profile. However, the O+ group's performance was comparable to the O- group on all other neurocognitive tests (ps > 0.05). These data partially support a model of accelerated neurocognitive aging in HIV infection, which was observed in the domain of auditory verbal attention, but not in the areas of memory, language, or speeded executive functions. Future studies should examine whether HIV-infected adults over 65 evidence accelerated aging in downstream neurocognitive domains and subsequent everyday functioning outcomes.

Keywords: Accelerated aging; Aging; HIV; Neurocognitive aging; Verbal attention.

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Conflict of interest statement

Conflict of Interest

The authors, David P. Sheppard, Jennifer E. Iudicello, Erin E. Morgan, Rujvi Kamat, Lindsay R. Clark, Gunes Avci, Mark W. Bondi, Steven Paul Woods, and The HIV Neurobehavioral Research Program (HNRP) Group declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Sample-based mean z-scores on neuropsychological tasks among older seronegative (O−), older HIV+ (O+), and older-old seronegative (OO−) groups. Error bars represent standard errors. Note. * p < .05; BNT = Boston Naming Test; CVLT-II = California Verbal Learning Test-Second Edition
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