Health-related quality of life in HIV patients: systematic review of decennial data and meta-analysis

Introduction
Assessing health-related quality of life (HR-QOL) in human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) patients is important for evaluating the effect of disease and measures of the influence of intervention to improve quality of life of HIV patients. The aim of the study was to systematically review and assess HR-QOL in HIV patients.

Material and methods
Randomized control trials assessing HR-QOL in HIV patients published in PubMed, Scopus, and Google Scholar records from January 2010 till December 2020 were considered. Retrieved records were screened by two authors independently. Cochrane collaboration’s tool was used to assess the risk of bias, and meta-analysis was performed using review manager software (RevMan v. 5.4.1).

Results
From 2,842 studies, 36 and 4 studies were included in qualitative and meta-analysis respectively. The overall standard mean difference in QOL of two studies with yoga intervention was 3.20 (95% CI: –1.55 to 7.95%; p = 0.19). The difference in quality of life in psychological and social domains of the yoga group was 2.81 (95% CI: –2.00 to 9.62%) and 6.62 (95% CI: 5.48-7.75%) re-spectively. HR-QOL from two studies that reported intervention in rehabilitation group with control group was not statistically significant (p = 0.94). However, physical domain of both the studies was statistically significant (p = 0.04).

Conclusions
Yoga and rehabilitation demonstrated significant positive outcomes in HR-QOL. Although few interventions had shown beneficial effects in HR-QOL, the results were not significant due to hete­rogeneity of studies. Therefore, more research are needed using similar outcome parame-ters to assess the quality of life among HIV patients.