HIV triggers a chronic neuroinflammatory process that causes premature brain aging, known as HIV-Associated Neurocognitive Disorder (HAND), which can affect patients even with adequate antiretroviral therapy (ART). Therefore, accurate cognitive assessment (CA) is essential for people living with HIV/AIDS (PLWHA), especially those over 50 years old. This study aimed to evaluate the use of virtual reality (VR) for neurocognitive monitoring in PLWHA, in order to understand the practical context of using this technology. This study is an excerpt from an experimental, quantitative, cross-sectional, descriptive study conducted at a health teaching clinic from February 2025 to July 2025, involving patients from the general medicine outpatient clinic and the PLWHA care clinic. The research was carried out in three stages: (1) clinical and sociodemographic characterization of participants; (2) cognitive assessment using traditional scales ‒ the Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE) and the Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA); and (3) use of the Cogniclear VR application by Virtualeap on Meta Quest 3 headsets, which allows full immersion and includes 14 exercises across 8 cognitive domains (abstract reasoning, attention, cognitive flexibility, naming and language, memory, motor skills, temporal orientation, and visuospatial abilities). The sample included 11 participants: 5 PLWHA and 6 general medicine patients, with a mean age profile of 56.5 years and mean schooling of 10.5 years. Using the MoCA, a mean result of 70.8% was found, based on an adapted metric designed to allow comparability between tests. With VR, the mean Global Score (GS) among analyzed patients was 73%, reflecting overall cognitive performance during the VR session. After data analysis, the Pearson correlation coefficient between GS and MoCA was +0.7862, interpreted as a strong positive correlation ‒ i.e., as MoCA performance increases, GS tends to increase as well ‒ suggesting a direct correlation between variables. The distinct nature of VR, with added spatial assessment and behavioral/physical data that contribute to a more complete and objective cognitive evaluation, suggests that VR may be a viable tool for diagnosing and monitoring neurocognitive deterioration in PLWHA.
Medeiros et al. (Sun,) studied this question.