Evaluation of psychoneuroimmunological interactions in HIV infected patients

Silvia Ouakinin, JL Simões da Fonseca

HIV Infection has a wide clinical and prognostic variability, apparently depending on biological, psychological and psychosocial determinants, personal or contextual ones, and therefore can be a privileged field for research of the psychoneuroimmunological interactions. The objective of this study is to evaluate some of the referred interactions, in a sample of 55 HIV1 positive patients and 30 healthy control subjects (N = 85).

Comparison between groups (t test) showed that patients exhibit a statistically significant greater emotional distress than controls, as well as an impairment in their quality of life. In medically stable and unstable patient groups, correlations between different level variables (Pearson correlations) showed psychoimmunological relationships which were apparently more clear in patients who will suffer a slower disease progression. These patients can be distinguished from the others with statistical significance, by levels of anxiety, depression, obsession/compulsion and sleep disturbance, as well as by the immune cell activation marker, CD25. Multiple regression analysis, using immune variables as dependent ones, confirms the importance of dimensions such as hostility, anxiety and stressors in determining immune variability.

In conclusion, we have found suggestive evidence relating the psychological factors and the immune response in HIV Infection.

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