AIDS Dementia Complex: A Complex, Slow Virus "Model " of Acquired Genetic Neurodegenerative Disease

The AIDS dementia complex (ADC) has a number of features in common with the neurodegenerative dis-eases: Its phenotype is that of a "system disease " with an hierarchical order of presenting symptoms and signs and subsequent progression (Nowak et al. 1991; Price 1995c); its pathology, although eterogeneous, also in-eludes selective involvement of particular structures and regions of the nervous system (Kure et al. 1990; Kuchelmeister et al. 1993; Brew et al. 1995); its latency is long and its course protracted; and it may be clinical-ly devastating, often lethally so (Neaton et al. 1994). It is also a genetic disease, albeit the result of the "acquired " exogenous genes of human immuno-deficiency virus type one (HIV-1) (Feinberg 1996). On the other hand, it occurs in the setting of a general in