Psychopathology and psychosocial adjustment in patients with HIV-associated lipodystrophy

• Autor(a) principal: Barata,Anna
• Data de Publicação: 2013
• Outros Autores: Malouf,Jorge, Gutierrez,Mar, Mateo,Gracia María, Sambeat,Maria Antònia, Gich,Ignasi, Cadafalch,Josep, Wulff,Juan, Domingo,Pere
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Brazilian Journal of Infectious Diseases
• Texto Completo: http://old.scielo.br/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S1413-86702013000400010
• topic: HIV; Lypodystrophy; Psychopathology; Psychosocial

OBJECTIVE: To study whether patients with HIV-1 associated lipodystrophy (LD) on highly active antiretroviral treatment (HAART) have more psychopathology and worse psychosocial adjustment than a similar group without this syndrome. METHODS: In a cross-sectional, observational study we compared 47 HIV-1 infected patients with LD (LD group) with 39 HIV-1 infected patients without LD (non-LD group). All participants were on HAART. The Beck Depression Inventory (BDI), the State and Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI) and the Goldberg Health Questionnaire (GHQ-60) were administered. Levels of familial, work and social adjustment and adjustment to stressful events were evaluated in a semi-structured interview. Clinical information was extracted from the clinical records. RESULTS: In the univariate analysis patients with LD showed higher state anxiety scores (p = 0.009) and worse work adjustment (p = 0.019) than those without LD. A total of 45.3% of LD patients scored above the cut-off point on the trait anxiety scale, and over 33.3% scored above the cut-off point on the BDI, GHQ and state anxiety scales. However, in multivariate analyses LD was not independently associated with psychopathology or with worse adjustment in the studied areas. CONCLUSIONS: The finding that LD was not a predictor of greater psychopathology or worse psychosocial adjustment in HIV-1 infected patients, despite the high scores found, suggests that factors not taken into account in this study, such as LD severity and self-perception should have been included in the analysis. Further studies including a greater number of variables and a larger sample size will advance our understanding of this complex condition.