A descriptive, cross-sectional study examining treatment burden in people living with HIV.
Nathanial Schreiner, Joseph Perazzo, Jackson Currie and 2 others
PMID 30853073WHAT IT FOUND
16 of 103 people living with HIV found self-management work highly burdensome, though most reported low overall burden.
Paperwork, medication timing, and exercise were hardest for that group.
Key findings
01Mean treatment burden was 22.84 on a 0 to 130 scale, and 16 of 103 participants reported high burden.
02For the 16 participants with high burden, paperwork, remembering medications at various times, medication limitations, and exercise were the highest burden items.
03The number of chronic conditions was associated with higher burden, and greater social capital was associated with lower burden; the model explained 8% of treatment burden's variance.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for RNs
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What it does not show
This was a secondary analysis of a study designed to look at physical activity, so it could not measure some important factors, such as whether a caregiver helped with self-management. Treatment burden was not the primary outcome of the parent study. The sample came from one HIV research site and was mostly African-American and Medicaid-insured; people without insurance or regular care were not represented. Overall burden was low and scores had a wide range, which may hide associations in people with moderate or high burden. The sample lacked variance in age, so age may have been hard to detect as a predictor. Only 11 non-African-American participants were included, so the higher burden in African-American participants was not statistically significant. The study used the 13-item questionnaire, while some comparison studies used the 15-item questionnaire, so results are not fully equivalent.
Declared interests
The authors reported no conflict of interest or funding for this study.
The easy way to misread this
Do not conclude that increasing social capital will lower treatment burden. This was a cross-sectional secondary analysis of associations, not a tested intervention.