Thanks – you ask great questions.<\/p>\n
Like many other infections, HIV can cause neurocognitive complications, but this in now dramatically lower with effective treatment.<\/p>\n
HIV treatment (called ART) is really effective and modern ARV’s mean you can lead a long and active life.<\/p>\n
They keep your immune system strong by keeping your CD4 count from dropping. They also dramatically reduce the immune inflammation cause by having a high viral load.<\/p>\n
Some studies report higher level of inflammation than if you were still HIV negative, but only by a little. However, this is only likely to cause clinical problems in a small percentage of people on ART. These people might also have other factors that increases the chance of other complications.<\/p>\n
These factors can include having a very low CD4 count when you were diagnosed and before you started ART, but the risk is much less once you are on treatment. I can also include natural things like ageing and getting older.<\/p>\n
This is why advice to have a healthy lifestyle is just as important if you are living with HIV.<\/p>\n
So yes, HIV can still cause neurological problems on ART, but the risk is generally low.<\/p>\n
Hi there, does HIV cause neurocognitive impairment?<\/p>\n
I’ve been reading some studies about HIV and I read something about that the chronic inflammation caused by HIV causes trouble to a person’s capacity of memory and learning. It is told that ARVs aren’t enough to avoid this effect of the disease. <\/p>\n
Is this really true or is this something from the past? <\/p>\n
The information from the studies seem way different from the so-called normal life that we see in health campaigns.<\/p>\n
Many studies talk about problems, including ageing faster, having chronic diseases early in life, and these disturbing problems associated with neurocognitive capacity.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,26,41],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21603","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-all-topics","category-living-with-hiv-long-term","category-support"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/i-base.info\/qa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21603","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/i-base.info\/qa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/i-base.info\/qa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/i-base.info\/qa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/i-base.info\/qa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21603"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/i-base.info\/qa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21603\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21610,"href":"https:\/\/i-base.info\/qa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21603\/revisions\/21610"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/i-base.info\/qa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21603"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/i-base.info\/qa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21603"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/i-base.info\/qa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21603"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}