Introduction:

The acquired immunodeficiency syndrome is the final stage of a chronic, communicable and progressive disease of viral cause. The neurotoxoplasmosis is the most frequent opportunist infection in immunodepressed patients.

Objective:

To characterize patients with secondary neurotoxoplasmosis to human immunodeficiency virus/aids according to epidemiological, clinical and imaging variables.

Methods:

An observational, descriptive and cross-sectional study of 18 patients with AIDS was carried out, who received clinical and microbiological diagnosis of neurotoxoplasmosis, characterized according to findings in the magnetic resonance by images before and after the treatment, from January, 2017 to December, 2019.

Results:

In the investigation there was a prevalence of the male sex, the ages of 34 or less years (66.7 %) and the clinical signs of fever (100.0 %) and headache (88.9 %). The most common localization of the lesions was in the cortico-subcortical juntion (66.1 %). The hypointense images in T1 and fluid attenuated inversion recovery and hyperintense images in T2 were the most frequent; the multiple lesions (66.7 %) of small size (50.0 %) and irregular contours (88.9 %) were notable. Before the treatment the enhance of anular type had more frequency (72.2 %) and grade 2 vasogenic edema (50.0 %); after this, 55.6 % of those affected persons presented calcifications and 72.2 % intralesional hemorrhages. It was evidenced that 77.8 % had improvement respect the cerebral edema.

Conclusions:

The magnetic resonance by images allowed to characterize the patients with human immunodeficiency virus/aids and cerebral toxoplasmosis, as well as to evaluate the therapeutic response through the modifications in the imaging findings.

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