Oral health associated with quality of life of people living with HIV/AIDS in Brazil

Abstract

BackgroundThe epidemic of HIV/AIDS enters into its fourth decade and is still considered an important public health problem in developed and developing countries. The purpose is verify the oral health and other factors that influence the quality of life of people living with HIV/AIDS attending a public service reference in Brazil.MethodsThe participants answered the questionnaire on socio-demographic conditions, issues related to HIV and daily habits. The quality of life was analyzed by the HIV/AIDS Targeted Quality of Life (HAT-QoL) instrument with 42 items divided into nine domains: General Activity, Sexual Activity, Confidentiality concerns, Health Concerns, Financial Concern, HIV Awareness, Satisfaction with Life Issues related to medication and Trust in the physician. The oral health data were collected by means of the DMFT index, use and need of dentures and the Community Periodontal Index, according to the criteria proposed by the World Health Organization, by a calibrated researcher. Bivariate and multiple linear regressions were performed.ResultsOf the participants, 53.1% were women and had a mean age of 42 years, 53.1% had eight years or less of schooling and 20.3% were not employed. In analyzing the quality of life domain of the HAT-QoL, with a lower average there was: Financial concern (39.4), followed by Confidentiality concern (43.2), Sexual activities (55.2) and Health concerns (62. 88). There was an association between the variables: do not have link to employment (p <0.001), is brown or black (p = 0.045), alcohol consumption (p = 0.041), did not make use of antiretroviral therapy (p = 0.006), high levels of viral load (p = 0.035) and need for dentures (p = 0.025), with the worse quality of life scores.ConclusionSocioeconomic and inadequate health conditions had a negative impact on the quality of life of people with HIV/AIDS.

Impacts of health of users with HIV/AIDS in a specialized service

“…This demonstrates the need for communication to the population about effective measures to control the transmission of this infection, which should be adopted in dental offices (36) . There is a high probability that participants in the present study were able to access dental services on a regular basis, only from their insertion in the specialized service for HIV/AIDS, when they did not present a good oral condition, a fact similar to that demonstrated in another research (17) . It also contributes to the late access to dental services, the ideology of the search for these professionals only when there is risk of injury to the tooth, caries or injury (37) .…”

“…In order to know the impact of oral problems on the quality of life of HIV/AIDS patients, from the field of quantitative methods, it is commonly sought to establish cause and effect relationships with the use of instruments such as OHIP-14, which mainly measure the negative impacts (7)(8)(9) . Nonetheless, evidence from the social sciences shows that this type of approach does not allow for a deepening of the variety of feelings generated by the subjects, also requiring qualitative studies to investigate the quality of life in the various aspects of living with HIV/AIDS, including also the positive aspects (3,(15)(16)(17)(18)(19)(20) .…”

Analysis of clinical, demographic, socioeconomic, and psychosocial determinants of quality of life of persons with intellectual disability: a cross‐sectional Study

“…The scientific literature presents a wide range of studies associating oral conditions with QoL in children, adolescents, adults and the elderly . Some also demonstrate the impact of social determinants on QoL .…”

Oral Health Status and Anthropometric Conditions among HIV Infected Adolescents on Antiretroviral Therapy in Mozambique

“…This concern even affects the demand for health care because these patients stop going or look for the dentist too late for fear of having to report that they have the HIV virus and may suffer prejudice due to the professional unpreparedness. This makes these patients prone to having major problems related to oral health [22]. Although oral candidiasis appears to be the infection more significantly decreasedafter the introduction of ART, the current literaturesuggests that the prevalence and course of periodontallesions have also been modified.However, our results do not support the hypothesis of different severities of periodontal disease between HIV vs non-HIV infected adolescents.…”