This volume aims at presenting the latest international research and discoveries in the neurocognitive aspects and complications in HIV/AIDS, and how this understanding can shape and inform how we think about clinical practice and patient care in HIV/AIDS as well as lead to a better understanding of the underlying neuropathogenesis. The chapter, "Metabolic Syndrome and Cardiovascular Disease Impacts on the Pathophysiology and Phenotype of HIV-Associated Neurocognitive Disorders", of this book is available open access under a CC BY 4.0 license at link.springer.com

During the past two decades, the world scientific community has witnessed major achievements in our understanding of the pathogenesis of HIV infection of the nervous system and HIV-Associated Dementia (HAD). Despite these giant gains, nervous system involvement during AIDS remains a relentlessly progressive disease with a deadly fate in many cases. This book on NeuroAIDS provides a unique resource for both general neurologists as well as basic neuroscientists with profound interests for research on NeuroAIDS. This book has special emphasis on the mechanisms of disease development and progression of HIV-infected patients with NeuroAIDS. The contributors have provided the readers with comprehensive reviews on clinical manifestations of HAD, mechanisms of HIV entry into the central nervous system, the role of cytokines and chemokines in pathogenesis of NeuroAIDS, drug abuse and NeuroAIDS, virus load in HAD, allostasis in HIV and AIDS, stroke in AIDS patients, and neuroimaging of HIV infection of the central nervous system. In addition, there are chapters on Varicella Zoster virus infection of HIV-seropositive and AIDS patients, as well as the molecular basis for opioids and AIDS virus interactions.

Written by leading experts, this book offers a picture of how HIV impairs the brain, focusing on emerging areas including genetic strains of the virus, interactions between advanced age and HIV, and the impact of HIV on the brain during antiretroviral therapy.

This text provides a clinical framework for the diagnosis and management of more than seventy potential neurological complications that may occur in the HIV infected patient. The clinical framework is designed to be "user friendly" so that even the most inexperienced clinician should be able to arrive at the correct diagnosis. The neurological complications of HIV disease have considerably changed in the last decade. Not only have more opportunistic conditions been described but other complications arising from antiretroviral drugs such as lipodystrophy and accelerated atherosclerosis have become problematic. Moreover, the pattern of complications has altered. Diseases such as cerebral toxoplasmosis, AIDS dementia complex and primary central nervous system lymphoma are now becoming uncommon to rare while peripheral neuropathy is becoming increasingly common. In line with these changes, there have been very significant advances in the therapy of HIV disease in general and in neurological complications in particular. Patients with AIDS dementia complex now have a variety of antiretroviral and adjuvant drugs available to them in contrast to the situation only five years ago where therapy was confined to two antiretroviral drugs at best.

This practical, comprehensive and highly illustrated book will be invaluable to students and doctors of neurology and internal medicine in Africa.