Quality of life and depressive symptoms in Chagas disease patients.
BACKGROUND
Besides the typical organic aspects of Chagas disease, the patients need to face physical, psychological, social and economic difficulties, which can compromise their quality of life. Consequently they may develop feelings of sadness, grief and loss, and depressive symptoms.


METHODS
This study assessed the quality of life and depressive symptoms in 110 Chagas disease patients using WHOQOL-BREF for measuring the quality of life; also it was used Beck Depression Inventory (BDI) for depressive symptom evaluation.


RESULTS
Among all patients, 51% were women; 42.5% considered their quality of life as positive and 40.9% presented depressive symptoms. Chagas disease clinical form distribution was: cardiac 49.09%, indeterminate 26.36%, digestive 12.73%, and mixed 11.82%. There was no significant difference comparing the depressive symptom intensity on gender, age and marital status, although there was a significant difference comparing depressive symptoms in indeterminate clinical form patients with others. All domains of WHOQOL-BREF showed significant correlation coefficients (Pearson).


CONCLUSIONS
At digestive form it was reported minor scores in the quality of life domains and greater ones on depressive symptom levels. There was a negative correlation between BDI and WHOQOL-BREF, suggesting that, among Chagas disease patients, the higher is the quality of life the lower is the intensity of depressive symptoms.
Department of Internal Medicine, Faculty of Medical Sciences, State University of Campinas, PO Box 6111, Campinas, SP 13083-970, Brazil. yaozaki@terra.com.br
Yaeko
Y
Ozaki
Maria Elena
ME
Guariento
Eros Antonio
EA
de Almeida
D000223:Adaptation, Psychological; D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D001938:Brazil / Q000453:epidemiology; D014355:Chagas Disease / Q000150:complications / Q000523:psychology*; D003430:Cross-Sectional Studies; D003863:Depression / Q000453:epidemiology / Q000209:etiology / Q000523:psychology*; D005260:Female; D006305:Health Status Indicators; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D011594:Psychometrics; D011788:Quality of Life / Q000523:psychology*; D012307:Risk Factors; D018709:Statistics, Nonparametric; D013315:Stress, Psychological; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires; D055815:Young Adult