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

The aims were: (1) to study verbal communication skills in HI V-1 patients, and (2) to analyze the proportion of patients presenting 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 neurolo gical or psychiatric disease; patients un dergoing antiretroviral treatment (not efavirenz) with viral load > 50 copies/mL, and patients not undergoing 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 ta sks that showed the most frequent and systematic deficits amo ng patients were discourse-level tasks and those that evaluate lexical semantic processing. The authors compared patients' perform ances with the "cut-off". The scores were turned into score Z. A hi erarchic cluster analysis was ca rried out to identify subgroups wi th different profiles according to the areas that were affected. The detection of communication deficit profiles in HIV-1 patients would be the starting point for the identification of disorders and the admission of the patients to health care system. This researc h constitutes an initial approach towards the identific ation of clinical profiles among HIV-1 patients.