HIV

HIV-related fatigue continues to be the most common complaint of infected people. No physiological factors have been consistent predictors for fatigue; psychosocial factors, particularly depression, have emerged more consistently in studies. While clinicians would want to rule out common causes of fatigue such as hypothyroidism, hypogonadism, or anemia, there is scant research for most interventions, which makes it difficult to make definitive recommendations for their use.

  As part of a larger randomized controlled trial examining the efficacy of an HIV/AIDS symptom management manual (n = 775), this study examined the prevalence of peripheral neuropathy in HIV-infected individuals at 12 sites in the USA, Puerto Rico, and Africa. Neuropathy was reported by 44% of the sample; however, only 29.4% reported initiating self-care behaviors to address the neuropathy symptoms. Antiretroviral therapy was found to increase the frequency of neuropathy symptoms, with an increased mean intensity of 28%.

Accurate self-administration of antiretroviral medication therapy for HIV/AIDS is a significant clinical and ethical concern because of its implications for individual morbidity and mortality, the health of the public, and escalating healthcare costs. However, the traditional construction of patient medication adherence is oversimplified, myopic, and ethically problematic.

PURPOSE: We examined the prevalence of recent HIV testing among sexually active adult Black women in the United States and the social, behavioral, and health care factors associated with their receipt of these services.
METHODS: Data from the 2002 National Survey of Family Growth were obtained. Our analyses focused on 1,122 sexually active non-Hispanic Black women aged 18-44 years. Descriptive and multivariate logistic regression analyses were conducted on the total sample of women and on 3 subsamples of women, stratified by age group.

This secondary analysis used E. Goffman's (1963) model of stigma to examine how social support and health status are related to HIV stigma, after controlling for specific sociodemographic factors, and how these relationships differed between men and women living with HIV. Baseline data from 183 subjects in a behavioral randomized clinical trial were analyzed using multigroup structural equation modeling. Women reported significantly higher levels of stigma than men after controlling for race, history of injection drug use, and exposure category.

Throughout the history of the HIV epidemic, HIV-positive patients with relatively high CD4 counts and no clinical features of opportunistic infections have been classified as "asymptomatic" by definition and treatment guidelines. This classification, however, does not take into consideration the array of symptoms that an HIV-positive person can experience long before progressing to AIDS. This short report describes two international multi-site studies conducted in 2003-2005 and 2005-2007.

A number of theoretical fatigue frameworks have been developed by nurse scientists with the intention of guiding research, practice, and education in fatigue. However, there is a significant gap between theory development and research utilization of fatigue frameworks in clinical and intervention trials.