Matout Mohamad, Brouillette Marie-Josée, Fellows Lesley K, Mayo Nancy E
McGill University, 1001 Decarie Blvd, Montreal, QC, H4A 3J1, Canada.
Center for Outcomes Research and Evaluation, Research Institute of McGill University Health Center (MUHC), Montreal, QC, Canada.
Soc Psychiatry Psychiatr Epidemiol. 2025 May;60(5):1077-1085. doi: 10.1007/s00127-024-02778-z. Epub 2024 Oct 5.
Brain health is a dynamic state involving cognitive, emotional, and motor domains. Measuring brain health is a challenge owing to the uncertainty as to whether it is one or many constructs. This study aimed to contribute evidence for brain health as a unified construct by estimating the strength of relationships between and among patient-reported items related to the brain health construct in a population with brain vulnerability owing to HIV.
Data for this cross-sectional analysis came from a Canadian cohort of people aging with HIV. The sample included 710 men recruited between 2014 and 2016 from five Canadian cities. A network analysis was conducted with 30 items selected from the brain-related domains of fatigue, cognition, depression, sleep, anxiety, and motivation. Node centrality measures were used to determine the most critical items in the network.
The network showed small-world properties, that is, most nodes can be reached from other nodes with few hops," indicating strong connectivity. The most central symptoms were "How much do you enjoy life?" and "How often do you have negative feelings?".
The small-world properties of the network structure indicate that brain health items are interconnected and may be influenced by shared underlying factors. The centrality indices suggest that items related to enjoyment of life and negative feelings may be particularly important for understanding brain health in this population. Future research should aim to replicate these findings in larger and more diverse samples to confirm their robustness and generalizability.
脑健康是一种涉及认知、情感和运动领域的动态状态。由于脑健康是单一结构还是多种结构存在不确定性，测量脑健康是一项挑战。本研究旨在通过估计因感染艾滋病毒而存在脑易损性的人群中与脑健康结构相关的患者报告项目之间关系的强度，为脑健康作为一个统一结构提供证据。
这项横断面分析的数据来自加拿大一组感染艾滋病毒的老年人群。样本包括2014年至2016年期间从加拿大五个城市招募的710名男性。对从疲劳、认知、抑郁、睡眠、焦虑和动机等与脑相关领域中选出的30个项目进行了网络分析。节点中心性测量用于确定网络中最关键的项目。
该网络显示出小世界特性，即大多数节点可以通过很少的跳跃从其他节点到达，表明连接性很强。最核心的症状是“你有多享受生活？”和“你多久有一次负面情绪？”。
网络结构的小世界特性表明脑健康项目相互关联，可能受共同的潜在因素影响。中心性指标表明，与生活享受和负面情绪相关的项目对于理解该人群的脑健康可能尤为重要。未来的研究应旨在在更大、更多样化的样本中重复这些发现，以确认其稳健性和普遍性。
