Application of the HAT-QoL instrument for quality of life analysis with women infected with HIV or AIDS and its correlation with socio-demographic, epidemiological, and clinical variables

Application of the HAT-QoL instrument for quality of life analysis with women infected with HIV or AIDS and its correlation with socio-demographic, epidemiological, and clinical variables.

THESIS: M. T. G. Galvão submitted this dissertation for her Masters in Tropical Diseases at Botucatu School of Medicine, São Paulo State University, UNESP, Botucatu, São Paulo, Brazil, 2002.

Advisor: Professor Jussara Marcondes Machado

Co-advisor: Professor Ana Teresa de Abreu Ramos Cerqueira

^{Address to correspondence}

ABSTRACT: AIDS is the most important disease from the end of the 20^th century. Epidemiological indicators show that AIDS has increasingly involved women; they present biological and social factors that render them more susceptible to the risk of contamination. This study assessed HIV-infected women in terms of their socio-demographic, epidemiological, and clinical characteristics; their quality of life using the HAT-QoL scale; and influence of the above characteristics on their quality of life. To assess quality of life, we used the instrument called HAT-QoL, developed for HIV-infected subjects, which consists of 42 questions divided into nine domains: overall functions, sexual function, disclosure worries, health worries, financial worries, life satisfaction, medication concerns, and provider trust dimensions. This study was performed on 73 HIV-infected women followed at the Special Infectious and Parasitic Diseases Outpatient Clinic of the Faculdade de Medicina de Botucatu, São Paulo state. Most women were younger than 39 years, housewives, with eight years of schooling or less, and had been almost exclusively contaminated through heterosexual relation. Of these, 50.7% had AIDS, and the remaining were infected with HIV. A large proportion came from municipalities with less than 100,000 inhabitants and lived on less than a minimum wage (R$ 151.00 at the time of the study). Approximately 50% of the women had been aware of their disease for at least four years and 83.6% were taking antiretroviral medications. With respect to the use of protection against HIV transmission and contraceptives, 13.7% reported inadequate means. In relation to sexual partnership, 54.9% were aware of positive serology of their partners, 35.4% reported seronegative partners, and 9.7% did not know about the serologic status of their partners. Of these, 15.6% reported having children after learning about their infection. Measurement of immunological markers one month before or after data collection showed that 72.1% had T CD4+ lymphocyte counts above 350 cells/mm³, 17.8% had an undetectable viral burden, 45.2% had 81 to 30,000 RNA copies/ml plasma, and the remaining had higher values. The results obtained after the application of the HAT-QoL showed that the major impairment to quality of life for women was related to financial worries, disclosure worries, health worries, and sexual function. Socio-demographic, epidemiological, and clinical characteristics of the women that were correlated with the life quality scale domains were: age, how long they have known about the infection, time of treatment, T CD4+ lymphocyte counts, and viral burden. The HAT-QoL life quality scale domains whose indices indicated impaired life quality of HIV-infected women were: financial worries, health worries, disclosure worries, and sexual function. Socio-demographic, epidemiological, and clinical variables that affected life quality as measured by the HAT-QoL scale were: age range, per capita income, time since infection diagnosis, time of treatment, T CD4+ lymphocyte counts, and viral burden. The HAT-QoL scale used proved useful for the HIV-infected women in this study, even though it originates from a culture different from Brazil, as it produced results similar to international literature.

Key words: AIDS, HAT-QoL, sociodemographic characteristics, epidemiological characteristics, clinical characteristics.

Publication Dates

• Publication in this collection
  09 Dec 2003
• Date of issue
  2003