Health-related quality of life of HIV patients with and without tuberculosis registered in a Tertiary Hospital in Port Harcourt, Nigeria

Abstract

Introduction: Little is known about health-related quality of life (HRQOL) of patients who suffer from human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)/tuberculosis (TB) in Nigeria. This study was carried out to measure and compare the HRQOL of HIV patients with and without TB at the HIV Clinic of University of Port Harcourt Teaching Hospital, Port Harcourt, Nigeria. Material and methods: A comparative cross-sectional study design and simple random sampling was used to recruit 144 HIV patients with TB and 144 HIV patients without TB. Information were collected on socio-demographic and socioeconomic variables, while their HRQOL was measured using the 26-item World Health Organization Quality of Life instrument. Univariate and bivariate analysis was carried out in Epi-info 7. Results: Females constituted 52% and 56% of HIV-only and HIV/TB co-infected groups, respectively. Their mean ages were 36.03 ± 10.92 and 35.69 ± 10.28 years, respectively (p = 0.532). HRQOL score ranged from 61.9 to 78.5 for HIV patients, and 61.6 to 75.8 for the co-infected patients. Co-infected patients had lower HRQOL in the physical (p = 0.016), psychological (p = 0.006), and global (p = 0.029) domains of HRQOL than HIV-only patients. The two groups did not differ significantly in the social and environmental domains (p > 0.05). Conclusions: The co-morbidity condition of HIV/TB significantly lowers the quality of life of sufferers. Attention should be focused on the medical and psychological management of HIV/TB co-infected patients in order to enhance their QOL.