title: Assessment of quality of life in early stage HIV-infected persons: data from the AIDS Time-oriented Health Outcome Study (ATHOS).
abstract: The development of new pharmaceutical interventions for persons with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection has resulted in extended survival and a need for valid, reliable and responsive instruments to assess health-related QoL (HRQoL). This paper reviews the reliability and validity of an HRQoL instrument, the AIDS Health Assessment Questionnaire (AIDS-HAQ), among persons participating in an observational database of HIV infection. The AIDS-HAQ includes nine subscales: disability, energy, general health, pain, cognitive functioning, mental health, social functioning, health distress and symptoms. Individuals complete the AIDS-HAQ quarterly. Data are reported for 440 individuals entering the study with early HIV infection. Fifty-nine progressed to symptomatic disease and 109 to AIDS after 1 year. The subscales of the instrument resulted in high internal consistency reliability (range = 0.79-0.88). Concurrent validity data reflected the ability to distinguish between patients with increasing disease severity. In all domains, except cognitive functioning, individuals who progressed to AIDS had significant decrements (p < 0.01) in HRQoL compared with symptomatic and asymptomatic patients. Significant decrements (p < 0.01) were observed for disability, general health, energy and symptoms for patients who progressed to symptomatic disease from an asymptomatic status. Individuals who had decreasing CD4+ counts also had significant declines (p < 0.001) in disability, general health, social functioning, pain and symptoms. The AIDS-HAQ is an instrument that can be used when comparing group differences and within group changes in observational databases, naturalistic studies and clinical trials.
authors.affiliation: Department of Medicine, Stanford University, CA, USA.
authors.forename: D P
authors.initials: DP
authors.lastname: Lubeck
authors.forename: J F
authors.initials: JF
authors.lastname: Fries
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D002140:California; D016208:Databases, Factual; D005260:Female; D015658:HIV Infections / Q000523:psychology*; D006801:Humans; D016018:Least-Squares Analysis; D008297:Male; D017063:Outcome Assessment, Health Care; D011594:Psychometrics / Q000379:methods*; D011788:Quality of Life; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires