Postural Stability Deficiencies in Asymptomatic Individuals With HIV

Summary

Persons with HIV can present vestibular system impairments, affecting postural stability. There is scarce literature related to the contribution of the visual and somatosensory systems in maintaining postural stability in persons with HIV. The purpose of this study is to describe the sensory systems used to maintain postural stability and how the sources of sensory information contributes to postural stability in asymptomatic persons with HIV. Postural stability was measured in 20 asymptomatic persons with HIV (11 male, 9 female, aged 43 ± 8 years). Static postural stability was evaluated during eight conditions that perturbed the visual, somatosensory and vestibular inputs. A paired-samples t-test was conducted to compare center of pressure (COP), antero-posterior displacement (APD) and right-left displacement (RLD) on stable and unstable surface and to characterize each balance sensory system. There was a significant difference in the COP and APD of eyes open condition compared to the remaining conditions on stable surface. Furthermore, there was a significant difference in the COP, APD and RLD for the eyes open on a foam surface compared to the remaining conditions on an unstable surface. Postural instability can be detected in asymptomatic persons with HIV under challenging conditions, previous to the evident appearance of balance impairments.

Conditions

• HIV
• Balance
• Vestibular Disorder
• Somatosensory Disorders
• Postural Stability

Interventions

OTHER

Postural Stability Testing

Each subject was instructed to stand in a static bipedal posture on the MatScan® pressure mat and performed 8 balance tasks. Data of center of pressure, antero-posterior sways and medial-lateral sways were collected in each of the conditions. Each task took 30 seconds to be performed. The first 4 tasks were performed with the mat on the hard surface of the floor. These 4 tasks are as follows: standing with eyes open, standing with eyes closed, standing with eyes open looking and actively moving head upward and downward, and standing with eyes closed and the head actively moving upward and downward. The subjects were asked to perform four more tasks while standing on a thick piece of balance foam that was placed on top of the MatScan®. The remaining 4 tasks are as follows: standing with eyes open, standing with eyes closed, standing with eyes open looking and actively moving the head upward and downward, and standing with eyes closed with head actively moving upward and downward.

Sponsors & Collaborators

• Texas Woman's University

  lead OTHER

Principal Investigators

• Martin G Rosario, Ph.D · Texas Woman's University

Study Design

Allocation

NA

Purpose

SCREENING

Masking

NONE

Model

SINGLE_GROUP

Eligibility

Min Age

25 Years

Max Age

57 Years

Sex

ALL

Healthy Volunteers

No

Timeline & Regulatory

Start

2014-07-22

Primary Completion

2015-05-22

Completion

2015-07-22