Depression predicts procedural but not episodic memory in HIV-1 infection

Forty-three homosexual/bisexual males with HIV-1 infection participated in a study that sought to determine: (1) whether increased levels of self-repo rted depressive symptomatology were associated with poorer performance on e pisodic or procedural memory tasks, (2) the relative strength of associatio n between the affective/cognitive or somatic symptoms of depression and mem ory deficits and level of immunosuppression, and (3) whether increased depr ession or neuropsychological deficits are associated with degree of immunos uppression. Linear regression analyses revealed that increased affective/co gnitive symptomatology was correlated with poorer performance on a procedur al memory task, but was not correlated with performance on an episodic memo ry task or degree of immunosuppression. In contrast, somatic symptoms showe d the strongest association with level of immunosuppression, but were not c orrelated with performance on the memory tasks. These findings underscore t he complex interplay between neuropsychiatric and neuropsychological sympto matology in HIV-1 infection.