HIV Dementia Alarmingly High in Africa; Johns Hopkins Study Suggests Rates Challenge Alzheimer's, Stroke Dementia Worldwide.

(From AScribe)

BALTIMORE -- An international study led by Johns Hopkins suggests that the rate of HIV-associated dementia is so high in sub-Saharan Africa that HIV dementia along with Alzheimer's disease and dementia from strokes may be among the most common forms of dementia in the world.

In the first study of HIV dementia on the African continent using rigorous neurological and neuropsychological tests, 31 percent of a small but presumably representative group of HIV-positive patients in Uganda were found to have HIV dementia, according to Ned Sacktor, M.D., a Johns Hopkins neurologist and senior author of a multi-institutional study that will be published …