HIV-related stigma and physical symptoms have a persistent influence on health-related quality of life in Australians with HIV infection.

International audienceBACKGROUND: The health-related quality of life (HRQL) of people living with HIV infection is an important consideration in HIV management. The PROQOL-HIV psychometric instrument was recently developed internationally as a contemporary, discriminating HIV-HRQL measure incorporating influential emotional dimensions such as stigma. Here we present the first within-country results of PROQOL-HIV using qualitative and quantitative data collected from a West Australian cohort who participated in the development and validation of PROQOL-HIV, and provide a comprehensive picture of HRQL in our setting. METHODS: We carried out a secondary analysis of data from Australian patients who participated in the international study: 15 in-depth interviews were conducted and 102 HRQL surveys using the PROQOL-HIV instrument and a symptom questionnaire were administered. We employed qualitative methods to extract description from the interview data and linear regression for exploration of the composite and sub-scale scores derived from the survey. RESULTS: Interviews revealed the long-standing difficulties of living with HIV, particularly in the domains of intimate relationships, perceived stigma, and chronic ill health. The novel PROQOL-HIV instrument discriminated impact of treatment via symptomatology, pill burden and treatment duration. Patients demonstrated lower HRQL if they were: newly diagnosed (p=0.001); naive to anti-retroviral treatment (p=0.009); reporting depression, unemployment or a high frequency of adverse symptoms, (all p