[Cerebral Changes in the Morphometrics of HIV Patients].

UNLABELLED Cerebral atrophy is a common finding in patients infected with the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV), particularly in patients with dementia. This disease shows neocortical compromise in late stages as well as compromise in the basal ganglia in early or asyntomatic phases. OBJECTIVE Evaluate changes in total brain volume, caudate nucleus volume, nucleus accumbens volume, and fractional anisotropy of white matter tracts in HIV patients without neurodegenerative symptoms, in comparison with healthy subjects. METHODS For segmentation and quantification purposes of the brain tissue, the brain and skull were extracted and the tissue was normalized according to total brain volume. From the tissue thus obtained, the caudate nucleus and nucleus accumbens volumes were segmented. The method of statistic spatial tractography was used for quantification and search of differences in the fractional anisotropy coefficient. RESULTS The percentage of white matter volume with respect to brain volume was smaller in HIV patients (42.83±2.65 %) when compared with healthy subjects (43.56±1.60 %). The percentage of left nucleus accumbens volume in HIV patients was 0.0254±0.0073 % of the brain and 0.0351±0.0067 % in healthy subjects; (p<0.05). CONCLUSIONS It was not evident A decrease in the volume of the gray matter parenchyma was not evident or significant, except in the left nucleus accumbens. Global but not regional changes were found in white matter tracts.