Prevention of AIDS dementia by HAART does not depend on cerebrospinal fluid drug penetrance.

The impact of the cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) penetrance properties of different highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART) regimes on cognitive processing in AIDS dementia is still undetermined. We therefore designed a retrospective cross-sectional and prospective longitudinal analysis of event-related potentials in HIV-infected patients with different combinations of HAART or without antiretroviral treatment. A total of 353 consecutive patients without secondary CNS manifestation of HIV infection were enrolled in the cross-sectional study and 135 consecutive patients without secondary CNS manifestations of HIV infection were enrolled in the longitudinal study. HAART in different combinations (n = 306) or no antiretroviral treatment (n = 47) was given for at least 6 months in the retrospective cross-sectional study. HAART in different combinations (n = 110) or no antiretroviral treatment (n = 25) was given for 1 year in the prospective longitudinal study. We evaluated the latency and amplitude of the P3 component of visually evoked event-related potentials and mean choice reaction time as measures of cognitive processing. Patients receiving HAART had decreased P3 latencies as compared to those patients not receiving HAART but P3 latency and P3 amplitude were not correlated with the amount of CSF penetrance of the different HAART combinations in either statistical analysis. However, mean choice reaction time was significantly correlated with the amount of CSF penetrance. In HIV-infected patients, the CSF penetrance properties of HAART do not have any significant influence on cognitive processing as measured by event-related potentials.