Clinical Parallels in Infectious Diseases of the Central Nervous System in Patients With Hiv

Abstract

A retrospective analysis of medical records of 451 patients with HIV infection showed that the most common clinical manifestations of cerebral tuberculosis are as follows: headache, fever ≥ 38.0 °C, meningeal symptoms; in toxoplasmosis encephalitis these are headache, paresis of cranial nerves and extremities, incoordination, cognitive disorders, dysarthria, fever ≥ 38.0 °C and convulsions; in mycotic lesions of the CNS they are headache, coordination disorders, positive meningeal symptoms, disturbances of consciousness, cognitive disorders, visual disorders, cranial nerve deficiency, convulsions and dysarthria. The clinical picture of bacterial (exacted) meningitis was dominated by positive meningeal symptoms, headache, fever, impaired consciousness. At the same time, in such neurological manifestations of central nervous system lesions as cranial nerve paresis, mono− and hemiparesis, visual, coordination and speech disorders, which mostly accompany cerebral toxoplasmosis, cerebrovascular diseases, brain tumors, encephalitis of unspecified etiology. Thus, the analysis suggests that the clinical manifestations of various etiologies of lesions of the central nervous system are often nonspecific and probably are stipulated with common morphological changes in brain tissue, which may be associated with the neuropathological effects of HIV, as well as a large impact co−infection. Key words: HIV infection, opportunistic infections, central nervous system, main symptoms.