Quality of life and perceived social support in people with HIV in Bogotá, Colombia

People living with HIV/AIDS report lower quality of life and less social support in evidence from developed countries.
Objective. To explore the association between perceived social support; affective or trust and each dimension of health-related quality of life.
Materials and methods. Cross-sectional study in people living with HIV/AIDS selected by convenience from a care program in a hospital network in Bogota. The SF36 health-related quality of life questionnaire and the Duke-UNC-11 generic questionnaire of functional social support were used. Linear regression models were performed.
Results. There is a direct relationship between the emotional well-being dimension of quality of life and affective social support (β: 7.36 CI95%: 1.04; 13.68) and trust (β 1.63 CI95% 5.30; 17.96). Also between the dimensions of physical function, emotional performance and bodily pain and perceived affective social support and between the perception of trusting social support and the dimensions of vitality and social function. In contrast, an inverse relationship was found between the mean scores of the dimensions of emotional performance, physical performance and general health with perceived affective social support for the first dimension and trust for the last two.
Conclusions. Subjects with better levels of perceived social support have a better reported level of health-related quality of life, a situation that provides inputs for the planning, design and implementation of health care plans that incorporate clinical, paraclinical and patient environment variables.