Study of the quality of life of people living with HIV/AIDS

Abstract

The quality of life of people infected by HIV has been studied due to advances provided by the treatment - that has guaranteed a decrease in the opportunistic infections, increasing the survival rate and consequent decrease in mortality. This project aims to study the quality of life of people living with HIV/Aids (PLHA) and its specific objectives are to evaluate if there is interference of the adhesion to the antiretroviral therapy (ART) in the quality of life and vice versa, as well as, if the results of the counting of T CD4+ and of the plasmatic viral load of HIV interfere in the quality of life and adhesion to TARV. Therefore, patients should answer the measurement instrument of quality of life (HAT-Qol), 96 PLHA which will be divided into two groups, G 1, composed of individuals who, in the moment of the inclusion in the study, show undetectable viral load and G 2, constituted by individuals who, in the moment of inclusion in the study, show viral load over detection limit. The results will be analyzed according to the distribution of patients, gender, age group, marital status, level of education, sexual orientation,CD4+ Tlymphocyte count, HIV plasmatic viral load and the time of HIV infection diagnosis, by the chi-square test (X²) and the Fisher exact test. In order to identify the variables and influencing factors in the score, Kruskal-Wallis or Mann-Whitney tests will be used to stimulate the effects of the variables described above in the scores of each domain. The Mann-Whitney test will be used to compare the two groups to the domains which were influenced by the variables studied. In all tests carried out, the differences will be considered significant, when p < 0,05, which p is the probability of concluding by the significance. (AU)