You have full access to this open access article. HIV-associated damage to the central nervous system results in cognitive and motor deficits. Anti-retroviral therapies reduce the severity of symptoms, yet the proportion of patients affected has remained the same or increased. Although approximately half of HIV-infected patients worldwide are women, the question of whether biological sex influences outcomes of HIV infection has received little attention. After 3 months of HIV-1 Tat exposure, both sexes showed similar reduced open field ambulation.
Male mice also had more cellular deficits in the striatum. Neither sex showed a change in volume or total neuron numbers. Both had equally reduced oligodendroglial populations and equivalent microglial increases. However, astrogliosis and microglial nitrosative stress were higher in males. Our results predict sex as a determinant of HIV effects in brain. Tat produced by residually infected cells despite antiretroviral therapy may be an important determinant of the synaptodendritic instability and behavioral deficits accompanying chronic infection.
Combination antiretroviral therapy cART has caused a dramatic decline in human immunodeficiency virus HIV -associated dementia and mortality.
However, the overall prevalence of more moderate motor and cognitive deficits, collectively termed HIV-associated neurocognitive disorders HAND , has remained similar in cART treated patients Robertson et al.
HAND occurs even in aviremic, cART-treated individuals, suggesting that many anti-retroviral regimens fail to reverse neurological damage, even while lengthening survival Heaton et al. In other studies, the pre- and post-cART risk of similar complications in both developed and resource-limited regions was reportedly higher in females Wojna et al.
