RESUMO
PIP: A sample of 16 asymptomatic female HIV carriers (in CDC stages I and II) infected heterosexually and a sample of 26 seronegative women hospitalized in Porto Alegre were studied in order to determine the nervous system manifestations of HIV infection. They answered the computerized version of the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test (WCST) to ascertain how the frontal lobe and the frontotemporal connection were functioning. There was a significant difference between cases and controls (p = 0.0132) with respect to the level of education. The cases performed worse in all measured parameters than the controls (p = 0.0060). The cases made a higher number of total errors (p = 0.00060), a higher percentage of perseverative errors (p = 0.00148) and nonperseverative errors (p = 0.0133). In order to find out whether a possible confounder was at play in the educational level, a stratified analysis was carried out. There was a significant difference between them regarding the total number of errors at the third grade educational level. Differences also appeared at the third grade level with regard to perseverative errors. There was also a significant difference between the two groups in the total number of errors (p 0.05) and perseverative errors (p 0.01) at the level of university education. Multivariate analysis (ANOVA) indicated that age did not alter either the percentage of errors or the number of perseverative responses. The level of education was of importance, but diagnosis was more important to the effect that it was significant in the multivariate equation. With respect to nonperseverative errors, which was altered by the level of education, this factor was isolated as the most important one which maintained significance in this type of analysis. This pilot project should be expanded in the future by applying neuropsychometric tests and depression and anxiety scales in order to confirm the validity of this evaluation.^ieng