Quality of Life and Associated Factors of HIV Patients Under Treatment with First Line Regimens in Public Hospitals in Amhara Region, North-West Ethiopia

BACKGROUND: The availability of medication related to HIV treatment in the world is one of the substantial improvements for reaching USAID’s 90-90 targets. Among the 90% of patients who have awareness about their disease, 90% are accessing their treatment and patients who received appropriate treatment have a suppressed viral load and improved CD4 cell count. Therefore, the main objective of the current study was to investigate the quality of life and associated factors of people living with HIV receiving first-line regimens at public hospitals in the Amhara region, Ethiopia. METHODS: A retrospective cohort study was conducted on 700 adult HIV-infected patients under treatment with first-line regimens, who were followed-up in 17 public hospitals in the Amhara region. A multivariate linear regression analysis was used for the current study. RESULTS: Of the 700 patients included in the current analyses, 59.5% (n=358) reported no impairment in self-care, while 63.1% (n=380) were extremely anxious/depressed. The overall expected EQ-5D utility score and visual analog scale (EQ-VAS) scores were 0.388 0.41 and 66.20 17.22 respectively. The current study indicated that the covariates sex, age of patient, level of education, appointment frequency, disclosure status of the disease, and substance use significantly affected the quality of life of people living with HIV and under treatment with first-line regimens. Hence, higher CD4 cell count and less detectable viral load lead to good quality of life of people living with HIV. CONCLUSION: This study indicates that certain covariates have been identified as statistically significant predictors of the study variable “quality of life” of HIV-positive people. The findings obtained in the current investigation can help policy-makers to revise the current directives. The result obtained in this study can also help health staff to conduct health-related education during the treatment of HIV patients.