Depressive Symptomatology, Syndromal Depression, and HIV-Associated Neurocognitive Disorder (HAND)

The article, “Associations between depressive symptomatology of neurocognitive impairment in HIV/AIDS” by Tymchuk et al.,1 is a scholarly work that addresses relationships and interactions between depressive symptoms and cognitive impairment in patients with HIV or AIDS. Depressive symptoms have been reported to affect up to 65% of patients with HIV in the era of effective ART,2,3 and HIV-associated neurocognitive disorder (HAND) is thought to occur at a high rate as well (approximately 50% prevalence across studies and as high as 64% in one study, excluding complaints of cognitive impairment).4,5 Hence, these disorders may be more common in some samples than cited in the article (45% and 24.5%, respectively). The relationship between these 2 entities is a question of major clinical import today