Is the History of Substance Abuse Correlated with Neuropsychiatric Disorders and Co-morbid HIV Infection? An Urban Population Study

BACKGROUND

Human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection remains a serious immunological disease with new infections in the U.S. disproportionately reported in minority populations. For many years, the District of Columbia (DC) has reported the highest HIV infection rate in the nation. Drug abuse and addiction is also prevalent in DC and has traditionally been linked to HIV/AIDS because of the likelihood for opportunistic infections. Despite this data, the relationship between HIV status, drugs of abuse, and the incidence of neurological disorders are scarcely reported for minority populations.

METHOD

We carried out a retrospective study on the prevalence of substance abuse in HIV and their association with neuropsychiatric comorbidities in an African American subpopulation in Washington DC.

FINDINGS

Our data suggests an 86 percent prevalence of drug use in the HIV patients with neuropsychiatric comorbidities, with cocaine use being significantly higher in patients with major depressive disorder (MDD) and bipolar disorder (BD), whereas PCP use was associated with patients with schizophrenia. The mean CD4 count was elevated in patients with neuropsychiatric disease, and specifically in MDD patients. CD8 counts were elevated as expected for HIV status but were not influenced by disease diagnosis. A majority (2/3) of patients were on HAART therapy, however the records did not account for adherence.

CONCLUSION

These data suggest that neuropsychiatric comorbidities are independent of HIV disease progression but are correlated with certain illicit drugs of abuse.

An evaluation of synthetic and natural supravital stains for the cytological examination of dissociated cells in a microfluidic channel

OBJECTIVE

Advances in biotechnology will result in paradigm shifts in both oncology and diagnostics. In pathology, methods such as microfluidics are being explored as delivery tools so that processed cells can serve dual purposes: conventional cytology-based diagnostics and recovery of the same cells for molecular assays. This wet mount-based approach to diagnosis will require staining of these cells by supravital dyes. This study was undertaken to determine the optimal supravital stain for the examination of cells in the wet mount preparations present in microfluidic platforms.

METHODS

Cells were dissociated from portions of tissue similar in size to a traditional core biopsy. These tissue-free cells were separately examined with two synthetic dyes and two natural dyes at varying dilutions.

RESULTS

Different dilutions of the synthetic dyes toluidine blue and methylene blue resulted in varying degrees of staining, whereas different dilutions of the natural dyes resulted in fairly constant intensities of colour. These characteristics affected the visualization of cells in wet mount preparations: optimally titered synthetic dyes gave better nuclear detail and cytoplasmic contrast.

CONCLUSIONS

All four dyes stained the test cells, but to different degrees and intensities. In our assessment, optimally titered synthetic dyes were better suited to the wet mount approach of microfluidics when compared with natural dyes.