QUALITATIVE FEATURES OF THE MEMORY DEFICIT ASSOCIATED WITH HIV-INFECTION AND AIDS - CROSS-VALIDATION OF A DISCRIMINANT FUNCTION CLASSIFICATION SCHEME

The neuropsychological defects associated with late stage HIV infectio n and AIDS have been characterized as being similar to those seen in p atients with dementia syndromes of subcortical etiologies. The purpose of this paper is to report on the cross-center replication of the cla ssification of HIV-infected subjects' neuropsychological status based on a discriminant function generated from other HIV-related and unrela ted cognitively impaired subjects. Of the HIV-control subjects, 42/46 (91.3%) were classified as ''Normal'', with only two subjects in each of two ''dementia'' groups: subcortical and cortical. However, similar to other HIV+ samples, a large proportion (36%) of our HIV-infected s ubjects were classified as ''Subcortical'', with 61% classified as ''N ormal'', and one (3%) in the ''Cortical'' group. These data demonstrat e that not only does the cognitive performance of some HIV+ subjects h ave distinct features relative to that of HIV-control subjects, but th at the features are consistent with previous suggestions that such pat ients have a ''Subcortical'' pattern of impairment.