Authors: Mamata Mishra, Prasanna Kumar Dixit
Since past 10 years, biomarkers for neurodegenerative diseases are becoming advantageous and have great impact on clinical trial. Neuropsychopathological changes in the central nervous system (CNS) and progressive neuronal dysfunction leading to cognitive and behavioural changes, is a common phenomenon in almost all the neuro-degenerative disorders. The deadly virus HIV-1 causes HIV associated dementia. Although disease severity has been reduced by the successful introduction of combined antiretroviral therapy (CART), complete eradication of HIV-1 has not been possible, especially from the central nervous system (CNS). Despite this success in post highly active anti-retroviral therapy (HAART) era, milder forms of neurological diseases remain common in HIV infection. Cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) is the connective source of information for HIV infection and disease severity between systemic and CNS infection. CSF biomarkers represent as valuable objective approach to understand the evolving patho-biology of HIV associated neurocognitive disorders. Clinical implications : 1. Biomarkers in cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) act as an indicator in the neurological disease progression in CNS and correlate with disease status, 2. Novel CSF biomarkers help in distinguishing drug na¨?ve HIV positive subjects with various type of opportunistic infections (OIs) such as toxoplasmosis, cryptococcus meningitis and tuberculosis meningitis, 3. It compares the minimal neurological scores (less diseases condition) with that of HIV uninfected individuals Keywords: Biomarkers, Cerebrospinal fluid (CSF), Central nervous system (CNS), HIV associated dementia (HAD).
Open full article page