Study Reveals Areas of the Brain Damaged by AIDS

(Ivanhoe Newswire) -- For the first time, patterns of brain destruction caused by AIDS have been documented.

Researchers from UCLA and the University of Pittsburgh recently published an imaging study involving high-resolution 3-D color scans created from magnetic resonance images. The research offers a new way to measure the affect of AIDS on the brain, revealing the brain is still vulnerable to infection when patients are receiving highly active antiretroviral therapy.

The study involved a new 3-D mapping technique to analyze MRIs of 26 people diagnosed with AIDS, and then compared the scans to those of 14 HIV-negative people. The brain scans measured the thickness of gray matter in various regions.

The striking differences between the AIDS patients and the control subjects' brain scans were easy to see on the detailed 3-D images. The researchers were surprised to discover AIDS consistently injured the brain's motor language and judgment centers, but left other areas alone.

"Two big surprises came out of the study," says Paul Thompson, Ph.D., first author of the study. "First, AIDS is selective in how it attacks the brain. Second, drug therapy des not appear to slow the damage. The brain provides a sanctuary for HIV where most drugs cannot follow.

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SOURCE: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, published online Oct. 10, 2005