Alexander Kwakye
Psychosocial disorders such as depression, anxiety and stress are more prevalent among HIV/AIDS patients compared to the general population. These psychosocial disorders impact negatively on HIV AIDS patients on highly active anti-retroviral therapy (HAART). This study determined how these psychosocial disorders impact CD4+ cell counts of HIV/AIDS patients receiving HAART in a peri-urban hospital in Kumasi, Ghana. This cross-sectional study included randomly selected 138 HIV/AIDS patients receiving HAART. DASS-21 questionnaire was used to determine the depression, anxiety and stress levels of participants. Venous blood sample was collected from each participant for the estimation of CD4+ cell counts. The mean age of the study sample was 45.2 ± 10 years, with about 79% of them being females. The prevalence of depression, anxiety and stress among the participants were 87%, 78.3%, 71% respectively. The median (Inter-quartile range, IQR) CD4+ count of participants with depression compared to nondepressed [340.8 (261, 713) cells/μL vs. 418 (242, 481.2) cells/μL; p ≤ 0.0001], anxiety compared to non-anxious [318 (124, 540) μL vs. 438 (267, 487) μL; p ≤ 0.0001] and stress disorders compared to non-stressed [370 (251, 467) μL vs. 484 (424.5, 752.3) μL; p ≤ 0.0001] were significantly lower. Depression and anxiety correlated negatively with CD4+ cell count of participants [Depression; (r=-0.13, p=0.556), Stress; (r=-0.2, p=0.359)]. This study shows that depression, anxiety and stress have negative impact on CD4+ cell counts of HIV/AIDS patients receiving HAART.
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