Health-Related Quality of Life and Associated Factors Among Adult HIV Mono-Infected and TB/HIV Co-Infected Patients in Public Health Facilities in Northeast Ethiopia: A Comparative Cross-Sectional Study

PURPOSE: This study was conducted to assess the health-related quality of life and associated factors among adult human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) mono-infected and tuberculosis (TB) and HIV co-infected patients in the public health facilities of northeast Ethiopia. METHODS: A comparative facility-based cross-sectional study was conducted from February 01 to May 30, 2019. A total of 434 HIV mono-infected and 143 TB/ HIV co-infected patients were randomly selected for the study. The data were collected using an interviewer-administered structured questionnaire. The health-related quality of life of patients was measured using the World Health Organization quality of life HIV instrument which contains physical, psychological, social relationships, environmental, level of independence, and spiritual domains. The validated version of the Kessler scale was used to assess depressive symptoms. Linear regression analysis was performed to identify factors associated with the outcome variables, and a p-value < 0.05 with 95% CI was used to measure the degree of association between health-related quality of life and independent variables. RESULTS: The mean scores of health-related quality of life among HIV mono-infected patients in terms of thephysical, psychological, level of independence, social relationships, environmental, and spiritual health domains were 63.9, 65.0, 60.5, 59.0, 56.4, and 63.9, respectively; whereas the mean scores among TB/HIV co-infected patients were 46.6, 48.5, 42.7, 43.5, 39.3, and 51.3, respectively. Among HIV mono-infected patients, being married improved the quality of social relationships by 6.7 compared with unmarried patients (β = 6.7, 95% CI = 3.24, 10.11); whereas among the TB/HIV co-infected patients, being educated increased the quality of social relationships by 10.6 compared with being uneducated (β=10.6, 95% CI=3.70, 17.51). CONCLUSION: The study revealed that the TB/HIV co-infected patients had poor health-related quality of life in all domains compared with HIV mono-infected patients. Besides, depression and stigma were more prevalent among co-infected patients. Therefore, designing and implementing specific management that focuses on psychiatric centers for TB/HIV co-infected patients will be necessary as their quality of life is lowered.