Quality of life of people living with HIV/AIDS: temporal, socio-demographic and perceived health relationship.
Rodrigo Leite Hipolito, Denize Cristina de Oliveira, Tadeu Lessa da Costa and 3 others
PMID 28443995WHAT IT FOUND
People living with HIV rated their quality of life as moderate across all areas.
Men, higher income and some work or religious groups reported better scores in specific areas. These are associations, not proof of cause.
Key findings
01Quality of life was intermediate in all six domains, with the highest mean in spirituality/religion/personal beliefs (14.61) and the lowest in environment (13.29) on a 4 to 20 scale.
02Men reported better quality of life in the level of independence domain, with scores of 14.51 for men and 13.00 for women (p = 0.028).
03Time since diagnosis showed no significant differences when grouped by months; when grouped by years, the physical domain had p = 0.052.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for RNs
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What it does not show
The sample came from one specialised clinic in one Brazilian municipality, so it may not apply to other places or to people not linked to care. It used convenience sampling, not random selection, and only 100 people. Some groups were very small, such as public workers with only 2 participants, so those findings are unstable. The study measured quality of life and factors at one time point, so it cannot show that income, work, gender or belief caused better quality of life. The authors note that a reference service may attract people with better living and health conditions, which could overestimate quality of life scores. Time since diagnosis was analysed in months and years, and the year analysis did not reach the study's significance threshold.
The easy way to misread this
Do not read the better scores in men, higher income or some work or religious groups as proof that these factors cause higher quality of life. The study only observed associations at one time point.