An Augmented Aging Process in Brain White Matter in HIV

T. Kuhn; T. Kaufmann; N.T. Doan; L.T. Westlye; J. Jones; R.A. Nunez; S.Y. Bookheimer; E.J. Singer; C.H. Hinkin; A.D. Thames

These findings suggest that the impact of early disease burden, even among a sample comprised of 11% of participants with currently detectable HIV RNA viral load, has adverse effects on brain/cognition as HIV+ individuals age. This provides further support of previous findings 9, that demonstrated this augmented aging effect in a sample with no participants with detectable HIV RNA. The relationship of the past plasma viral load to current brain reservoirs of HIV are not known, and we can only speculate that persons with a higher plasma viral burden in blood may have also acquired more viral seeding in brain; this may be the stimulus for greater neuroinflammation and more neurodegeneration over years of exposure. Taken together, these findings may suggest . CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 International license is made available under a The copyright holder for this preprint (which was not peer-reviewed) is the author/funder. It . https://doi.org/10.1101/265199 doi: bioRxiv preprint Kuhn, T., Ph.D. 16 that HIV is associated with an augmented aging process in WM which is itself associated with lower cognitive performance.