04 Dec Two more students receive CROI awards

An additional two PhD students received Young Investigator Awards for presenting their research at CROI 2015.

New results from the AGE_hIV Cohort Study, investigating comorbidity and aging in HIV, will be presented at the CROI 2015 conference as well. Two abstracts have been accepted for poster presentation and both submitting PhD students have received a Young Investigators Award.

Katherine Kooij prepared an abstract, in which she compared markers for liver fibrosis between HIV-infected and HIV-uninfected study participants, all aged 45 years and older, and specifically focussing on those without hepatitis B or C co-infection. Overall, liver fibrosis based on FIB4 and APRI scores was uncommon in both groups. HIV was independently associated with a higher (=worse) APRI, but not FIB4 score. In the HIV-infected participants prior exposure to dideoxynucleoside analogue reverse transcriptase inhibitors (ddI, ddC, d4T ) and a lower current CD4 count each were associated with more liver fibrosis by both markers.

Rosan van Zoest prepared an abstract, in which she assessed the diagnostic characteristics of four commonly used tools to screen for HIV-associated cognitive impairment. The screening tools were applied in a subset of HIV-infected men with undetectable viremia and HIV-uninfected men, enrolled in the AGE_hIV Cohort Study. Similar proportions with abnormal screening scores were found in both groups. Each of the four screening instruments performed poorly in detecting HIV-associated cognitive impairment (as diagnosed by gold-standard neuropsychological assessment), suggesting that none of the available screening tools thus far seems optimal for use in clinical practice.