Study on the quality of life and influencing factors among people living with AIDS

Abstract

Studing the main influencing risk factors to provide evidence for improving the quality of life among people living with HIV. The quality of life on 758 patients with HIV was evaluated by the Medical Outcomes Study Short-Form Health Survey (SF-36) and some potential risk factors as personal characteristics and disease condition were studied. Means and standard deviations of data were calculated and differences among groups and variances were tested using Student's t test, followed by step-wise multivariate regression. The SF-36 two summary scores of 758 patients with HIV appeared to be 45.34 +/- 8.77 and 41.92 +/- 12.01 respectively. The physical component summary scores (PCS) had a gradual decrease with the increase of age. However, mental component summary scores (MCS) had a gradual decrease with the increase of time receiving the treatment. Male patients reported having a better quality of life (QOL) than female, and patients who were infected through injecting drug use and sexual transmission reported to have had better QOL than patients who were infected through paid blood plasma donation. Compare to patients having low CD4+ count, those having higher CD4+ count reported to have better QOL. Patients being young, female, infected through paid blood plasma donation, having low CD+ count, or treated for longer period, would have unsatisfactory QOL.