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Among the bewilderingly changeable variety of neurologic disorders associated with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), stroke is uncommon. To better define the stroke–HIV connection, investigators studied the clinical, imaging, and laboratory features, risk factors, and pathogenesis of stroke in 67 HIV-infected patients from among a cohort of 1087 stroke patients in South Africa.
Of the HIV-infected patients, 91% were younger than 46 (the cutoff for automatically being offered HIV testing). In nearly half of these patients, the stroke led to the HIV diagnosis. Most (96%) of the strokes were infarctions: deep lacunes in 13, in the carotid distribution in 44, in the posterior circulation in 7, and venous infarction in 1. Among 48 patients in w…