Severe HIV-1 encephalitis and development of cerebral non-Hodgkin lymphoma in a patient with persistent strong HIV-1 replication in the brain despite potent HAART -- case report and review of the literature.

A 39 year old patient with HIV-1 infection, who was asymptomatic without antiretroviral therapy (HAART) for ten years, developed severe encephalopathy. Despite therapy with a four drug antiretroviral combination regimen including two protease-inhibitors (PI), plasma viral load could not be suppressed sufficiently with persistence of low level viremia of 3.08-3.40 log copies/ml, even after addition of two other antiretroviral drugs. On therapy the patient showed improvement of clinical symptoms, however with severe persisting cognitive deficits. Repeated parallel measurements of viral load showed a far higher viremia in the cerebrospinal fluid than in the plasma. Resistance testing provided no evidence of relevant PI-mutations and analysis of protease inhibitor levels demonstrated good plasma levels. 17 months after start of HAART, the patient developed a cerebral Non-Hodgkin lymphoma, leading to his death despite radiation therapy. There has been a dramatic reduction in the prevalence of HIV-1 associated CNS events in the post-HAART era. Nevertheless, subgroups of patients are infected with neurotropic viral variants which could cause progressive neurological pathology as they can not be reached sufficiently by the available drugs. These patients require the development of new drugs that achieve a better penetration into the brain.