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Health-related quality of life (HRQoL) and its correlates among community-recruited children living with HIV and uninfected children born to HIV-infected parents in West Bengal, India

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Abstract

Purpose

Helping children living with HIV (CLH) to attain an optimum quality of life is an important goal for HIV programs around the world. Our principal objectives were to determine the association of HIV infection with different domains of health-related quality of life (HRQoL) among 8- to 15-year-old CLH in India and to compare the HRQoL parameters between CLH and HIV-negative children born to HIV-infected parents (“HIV-affected”). We also assessed whether antiretroviral therapy (ART) and CD4 lymphocyte counts were associated with HRQoL among CLH.

Methods

Using the “Quality of Life (health-related) of Children Living with HIV/AIDS in India” instrument, we interviewed 199 CLH and 194 HIV-affected children from three districts of West Bengal, India. Participants were asked to quantify the difficulties faced by them in six HRQoL domains: physical, emotional, social, school functioning, symptoms, and discrimination.

Results

The mean age of the participants was 11.6 (SD ± 2.5) years. CLH, compared to HIV-affected children, had poorer scores on all HRQoL domains except ‘discrimination.’ Among CLH, there were no significant differences in HRQoL domain scores (except in the ‘discrimination’ domain) between ART-treated and -untreated groups. CD4 lymphocyte count was found to be a significant positive predictor of the ‘symptom’ scale score.

Conclusions

In India, interventions for CLH mostly focus on biological disease. However, the current study revealed that HRQoL among CLH was much poorer than that of a socio-demographically comparable group. Culturally and developmentally appropriate psychosocial support measures for Indian CLH are urgently needed.

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Funding

This study was funded by NIH/Fogarty International Center grant D43 TW000013 (R.D.).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. CARE India Solutions for Sustainable Development, H No. 14, Patliputra Colony, Patna, Bihar, 800013, India

    Aritra Das

  2. Department of Epidemiology, UCLA Fielding School of Public Health, University of California, Los Angeles, CA, 90095-1772, USA

    Roger Detels, Abdelmonem A. Afifi, Marjan Javanbakht & Frank J. Sorvillo

  3. National Institute of Cholera and Enteric Diseases (NICED/ICMR), P-33, CIT Road, Scheme-XM, Beliaghata, Kolkata, West Bengal, 700010, India

    Samiran Panda

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  1. Aritra Das
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  2. Roger Detels
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  3. Abdelmonem A. Afifi
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Correspondence to Roger Detels.

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All authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

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All procedures performed in this study were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki Declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

Informed consent

Informed consent was obtained from the caregivers of all participating children. Additionally, verbal assent was obtained from each of the participating children.

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Das, A., Detels, R., Afifi, A.A. et al. Health-related quality of life (HRQoL) and its correlates among community-recruited children living with HIV and uninfected children born to HIV-infected parents in West Bengal, India. Qual Life Res 26, 2171–2180 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11136-017-1557-x

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