Coping strategies for adverse effects of Antiretroviral Therapy among adult HIV patients attending at University of Gondar Referral Hospital, Gondar, Ethiopia

Abstract

Abstract Background: Adverse effects from antiretroviral therapy (ART) impact the quality of life, adherence to care and influence decisions about health care. There are evidence that adverse drug reactions (ADRs) prevalence and incidence in ART programs are much higher and has a wide range in manifestation. There is also no clear understanding of how people manage the adverse effects of ART. The individual taking medications which cause serious adverse effects may choose to stop or reduce the medications to relieve the adverse effects. Objective: The main objective of this study was to assess coping strategies for adverse effects of ART among adult human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) patients. Methods: A cross sectional study was conducted on coping strategies for adverse effects of ART among adult HIV patients at University of Gondar Referral Hospital (UoGRH) from February 1 , 2017 to March 30 th , 2017. A structured questionnaire was used to collect the data. The participants were requested to respond their coping strategy for adverse effect of ART. Data were checked on daily basis. Data were entered to Epi Info and analyzed by statistical package for social sciences (SPSS) version 20 software. Descriptive statistics were used to summarize patient’s sociodemographic

data and the adverse effects of their highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART) regimen. Binary and multivariate logistic regressions were conducted to see the existence of the association between dependent and independent variables. Results: Of 394 adult HIV patients, 66% were females and the majority (38.1%) of study participants aged between 35–44 years. The major adverse effects reported by the participants were headache (48.2%), fatigability (18%) and loss of appetite (17.5%). Coping strategies used by 394 adult HIV patients for adverse effect of antiretroviral therapy were positive emotion coping strategy (91.1%) followed by social support seeking (76.6%), take other medications (76.6%), information seeking (48.7%) and non-adherence (35.5%). Younger & older age, low level of education, and living far from the health institution were associated with non-adherence coping strategy to relieve the adverse effects of ART. Conclusion: From this study, it was determined that positive emotion coping was the most commonly used strategy. There were a significant number of patients use non-adherence as a coping strategy. Hence, continuous health education & counselling should be given to HIV patients attending at UoGRH on coping strategies for adverse effects of ART by health care providers. Key words: HIV, HAART, Adverse effect, coping strategy, UoGRH, Ethiopia