Search bioRxiv⌕ Search
Home/Archive/bioRxiv

bioRxiv · 10.1101/416362

High prevalence of neurocognitive disorders observed among adult people living with HIV/AIDS in Southern Ethiopia: a cross-sectional study.

debalkie, m.·Bekele, M.·Workineh, Y.·yihune, M.
View original source ↗Export metadata ↓

Abstract

BackgroundComprehensive care given to people living with HIV/AIDS is improving from time to time; however, their concurrent cognitive illness is still ignored, under screened and treated particularly in developing countries. And this problem is also striking in Ethiopia. Therefore, the objective of this study was to assess HIV-associated neurocognitive disorders and associated factors among adult people living with HIV/AIDS.\n\nMethodsAn institution based cross sectional study was conducted in Gamo Gofa zone public Hospitals from April to May, 2017. The systematic random sampling technique was used to select a total of 697 people living with HIV/AIDS. Data was collected using structured interviewer administered questionnaire and International HIV Dementia Scale was used to screen HIV-associated neurocognitive deficits. Data was entered using Epidata version 3.1 and analyzed using SPSS version 20. Both bivariable and multivariable logistic regression analyses were performed to identify associated factors. A P value 0.05 with 95% confidence level was used to declare statistical significance.\n\nResultA total of 684 study participants were included with a 98 % response rate. From the total participants, 56% were females while 44% were males. The mean ({+/-}SD) age of the participants was 38.8{+/-}8.8years.\n\nThe prevalence of HIV-associated neurocognitive disorder was 67.1% (95%CI; 63.6, 70.5). The multivariable logistic analysis indicated that body mass index 16 kg/m2 (AOR 4.149 (1.512-11.387)), being married (AOR 0.9 (0.604-0.623), unemployment (AOR 5.930 (3.013-11.670) and being in WHO clinical stage T3 category (AOR 2.870 (1.098-7.500) were the key predictors of HIV-associated neurocognitive disorders among people living with HIV/AIDS.\n\nConclusionIn this study the prevalence of HIV-associated neurocognitive disorder is higher than the earlier reports in Ethiopia and Africa. The associated factors also vary from that of earlier studies. This indicates the need for formulating preventive mental health programs and policies for people living with HIV/AIDS.

Source connections

Explore related subjects

neurosciencePreprint

Keep this discovery

Explore connections, maps & timelines

BibTeXRIS

debalkie, m., Bekele, M., Workineh, Y., yihune, M.. 2018-09-13. High prevalence of neurocognitive disorders observed among adult people living with HIV/AIDS in Southern Ethiopia: a cross-sectional study.. https://doi.org/10.1101/416362

Cite the original work for its findings. Save a collection to share your selection of sources.

KEEP EXPLORING

Related preprints

bioRxiv2026

Exploring subacute effects of a DMT and harmine meditation retreat on the brain's control energy landscape

Modeling the brain as a controllable structural network allows the estimation of the control energy (CE) required to reach functional states, where low-CE states are more accessible. Psychedelics are thought to acutely flatten the brain's CE landscape, broadening the repertoire of reachable states, but whether this reorganization persists into the subacute ``afterglow" window is largely unknown. This exploratory study uses rs-fMRI from a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial (N = 39; 19 verum [N,N-dimethyltryptamine (DMT) + harmine, Ayahuasca-inspired formulation], 20 placebo) scanned before and after a three-day meditation retreat. We compute CE on a group human connectome project (HCP) structural connectome under two approaches that emphasize long and short timescale dynamics. Globally, we found no systematic shift in the distribution of CE between transitions, however mean CE increased in both groups at the long timescale approach. Surviving network effects emerge when a network's intrinsic timescale matches the stabilization regime. In the long timescale regime, the central executive network (CEN) showed an increase in post-retreat CE within the verum group that survived Benjamini-Hochberg False Discovery Rate (FDR-BH) correction. Although CE and functional connectivity are distinct, this higher CEN cost may relate to the reduced within-network connectivity previously reported subacutely after psilocybin. The default mode network (DMN) also showed a post-retreat CE increase in both groups, but neither change survived FDR correction. In the short timescale approach, the visual network (VN) showed a FDR-BH CE decrease within the verum group, consistent with reduced dynamical demand in a region acutely engaged by DMT. To examine whether changes were concentrated in less accessible states, we additionally analyzed rare brain states, defined by the top decile of information content. This analysis revealed a modest session x condition interaction in the long timescale approach. Overall, the two timescale lenses surface different network effects, that align with cortical timescale hierarchies. These findings point to network- and timescale-specific, rather than global, CE changes in the afterglow window, though effects are small and heterogeneous and require confirmation in larger samples. Characterizing whether and where psychedelic effects persist into the subacute window is relevant to psychedelic-assisted therapy, including safety, therapeutic timing, and durability of drug effects. More broadly, considering cortical timescale hierarchies may help identify network-specific CE changes that might be less apparent when networks are evaluated under a single dynamical timescale.

neuroscience↗
bioRxiv2026

Advanced meditation stabilizes cortical dynamics through inhibitory gain control linked to absorptive depth

Advanced meditation can shift conscious experience from ordinary body- and world-centered awareness toward absorption, detachment and dissociation-like states, yet the neural mechanisms that stabilize these immersive states remain unclear. We studied 18 long-term meditators during eyes-open rest and Rajyoga meditation, a practice in which practitioners reduce bodily identification while enhancing inner self-awareness. We combined multidimensional neural approach including frontal EEG spectral power, temporal non-stationarity and corticothalamic neural-field modeling, because these measures probe underlying complementary levels of the brain state transition: the strength of neural activity, its temporal stability, and the circuit level inhibition-excitation gain mechanisms. This framework is especially relevant to meditation because oscillatory, temporal organization may distinguish stable meditative states, and corticothalamic dynamics are closely linked to arousal and conscious state regulation. We correlated meditation induced neural changes with subjective ratings of absorption and dissociation. Compared with rest, meditation was associated with higher beta1, beta2 and gamma power, with no change in the slower bands (delta, theta and alpha), and with lower beta-band temporal non-stationarity, indicating a more stable expression of fast cortical dynamics. Fitting the corticothalamic model to the EEG spectra showed stronger cortical inhibitory gain and lower effective intracortical gain, placing meditation in an inhibition-dominant regime, with lower gain in the loop between excitatory and inhibitory neurons within the cortex. During meditation, these model estimates were related to subjective absorption and showed trend level links with dissociation. Together, these findings suggest that Rajyoga meditation stabilizes cortical dynamics through inhibitory gain control, linking absorption (deep and steady attention on the meditation) to dissociation-like self-detachment.

neuroscience↗
bioRxiv2026

CoReg, tracking-based motion compensation for in vivo calcium imaging

In vivo calcium imaging enables the observation of neural activity with high spatial and temporal resolution. However, recordings are frequently affected by motion artifacts caused by animal movement, physiological processes, tissue drift, or instability of the imaging setup. These artifacts make signal extraction harder and reduce the consistency of downstream analyses. Current registration methods can correct rigid and non-rigid motion, but often estimate motion from individual frames or image patches and make limited use of temporal information. In addition, activity-driven fluorescence changes can make it difficult to distinguish changes in image appearance from actual motion. Here, we treat motion correction in calcium imaging as a point tracking problem and introduce CoReg, an open-source Python- based software tool with a graphical user interface. We benchmark CoReg against established registration methods using fluorescence imaging datasets from multiple species. CoReg performs competitively with or better than existing approaches across several settings. We further show that its performance is robust to the choice of tracked points, making the method straightforward to apply. CoReg includes implementations of both our method and the evaluated established methods. Our results show that tracking-based registration provides a simple and reliable approach for motion correction in vivo calcium imaging.

neuroscience↗