Verbal Communication in HIV-1 Patients: A New Perspective on the Study of Cognitive Disorders

Abstract

The aims were: (1) to study verbal communication skills in HIV-1 patients, and (2) to analyze the proportion of patientspresenting with verbal communication deficits by applying the MEC Protocol. The authors evaluated 20 patients over 18 years of age;HIV-1 positive; native speakers of Spanish; without alterations in language acquisition, reading, writing or history of neurological orpsychiatric disease; patients undergoing antiretroviral treatment (not efavirenz) with viral load >50 copies/mL, and patients notundergoing treatment. Their verbal communication abilities were evaluated with Protocol MEC. The results demonstrate that some of the skills evaluated are more vulnerable in HIV-1 patients. The tasks that showed the most frequent and systematic deficits amongpatients were discourse-level tasks and those that evaluate lexical semantic processing. The authors compared patients? performanceswith the ?cut-off?. The scores were turned into score Z. A hierarchic cluster analysis was carried out to identify subgroups withdifferent profiles according to the areas that were affected. The detection of communication deficit profiles in HIV-1 patients wouldbe the starting point for the identification of disorders and the admission of the patients to health care system. This researchconstitutes an initial approach towards the identification of clinical profiles among HIV-1 patient.