Novel brain map tracks early brain atrophy from HIV infection

A new map of brain tissue in people with HIV shows atrophy in several areas including a primary neurocognitive control center where shrinkage and loss of function can be seen in scans before clinical symptoms appear.

The map and other findings from researchers at Georgetown University Medical Center, are published in the journal Human Brain Mapping.

The brain map paints a two-stage model of what exposure to HIV does to the brain, says the senior author, Xiong Jiang, PhD, director of the Cognitive Neuroimaging Laboratory at Georgetown.

"The drugs we use to keep HIV at bay work wonderfully well in the body, but they cannot easily reach the brain due to the blood-brain barrier," says Jiang. "We have long known about neurocognitive impairment resulting from HIV, but this is the first time we have a neural model to relate neurocognitive impairment severity to injury in certain brain structures." HIV-associated neurocognitive disorders are known as HAND.

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