HIV-INFECTED CHILDREN WITH HEMOPHILIA - ONE-YEAR AND 2-YEAR FOLLOW-UPOF NEUROPSYCHOLOGICAL FUNCTIONING

This report describes the absence of neuropsychologic change observed over a 2-year period for 25 HIV-seropositive (HIV+) children and adole scents with hemophilia and 33 HIV-seronegative (HIV-) controls. Effort s were made to match the groups on the basis of chronological age, rac e, and hemophilia severity. The baseline evaluation included blinded n europsychologic measurement of motor, attention, language, visual proc essing, memory, and general intelligence. HIV+ and HIV-group means did not differ at baseline on any neuropsychologic domain, and this trend continued at the 2-year follow-up. Mixed models analyses did not indi cate that the HIV+ group performed more poorly than the HIV- group on any of the neuropsychological domains, nor did they show different pat terns of change over time on these variables for the HIV+ group. Consi stent with emergent findings, it continues to be premature to attribut e subtle neuropsychologic deficits in seropositive children with hemop hilia directly to the central nervous system (CNS) effects of HIV infe ction.