Hepatitis C Boosts Brain Changes

Studies presented at the 11th Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections suggest that neuropsychological impairment is more common in adults coinfected with HIV and hepatitis C than those with only HIV infection. Coinfected study subjects had significantly lower performance scores on several assessment tasks and tests, including those measuring attention, visual-motor coordination, mental flexibility, and information processing speed. Coinfected participants also were much more likely to suffer from clinical depression'56% of the HIV-HCV coinfected adults were clinically depressed, compared to 33% of those infected with HIV alone. Depression is associated with impaired cognitive function.