An estimated 40.8 million people were living with HIV or AIDS \u00a0throughout the world at the end of 2024, and 1.3 million new infections and approximately 630,000 AIDS-related deaths were recorded in 2024. Although it is known that people living with HIV (PLWH) experience emotional problems and psychologic distress related to the condition, different studies provide varying estimates about the number of people affected. Therefore, the estimated prevalence of psychologic distress experienced by PLWH remains unclear. In a recent systematic review and meta-analysis published in Frontiers in Public Health, the researchers wrote that they aimed \u201cto synthesize the prevalence of PD among PLWH and examine its heterogeneity and associated factors.\u201d<\/p>\n
Qiaoting Xue and colleagues followed PRISMA 2020 standards, systematically searching seven major electronic medical databases from their inception through June 20, 2025. They looked for observational studies that measured psychologic distress in PLWH and only selected studies that used validated self-reported questionnaires with clear cutoff scores. In total, 16 studies, which included 10,204 participants, were selected.<\/p>\n
The researchers used statistical methods to examine variation across studies and calculated odds ratios for factors associated with psychologic distress separately. They used meta-regression to determine why individual studies had prevalence estimates that differed greatly. They also rated the quality of individual studies and how strong their evidence was using the Grading of Recommendations Assessment, Development and Evaluation (GRADE) framework, a widely used standard in evidence-based medicine.<\/p>\n
Across all 16 selected studies, an estimated 40% of PLWH experienced some form of psychologic distress (0.40; 95% CI, 0.28-0.53).<\/p>\n
Meta-regression revealed that the variation in data across studies (I2=96.25%) was largely due to geographic region and the diagnostic tool clinicians used to measure psychologic distress.<\/p>\n
Psychologic distress was seen to be five times more likely if patients kept their condition a secret (OR, 4.95; 95% CI, 3.23-7.58). Patients who did not continue to take their medication were also more distressed (OR, 4.55; 95% CI, 1.96-10.54), as well as patients with a low CD4 count (OR, 2.59; 95% CI, 1.62-4.13). Female patients were twice as likely to be distressed as men (OR, 2.26; 95% CI, 1.67-3.07).<\/p>\n
In contrast, social support was observed to reduce the odds of experiencing psychologic distress. Married patients had odds reduced by 65% (OR, 0.35; 95% CI, 0.26-0.47).<\/p>\n
The findings of this study suggest a two-way relationship between mental and physical well-being in HIV care. Emotional distress can make a person less able to adhere to treatment, and deteriorating physical health can increase emotional strain. The link between disclosure and psychologic distress is worth examining because stigma and secrecy can exert a heavy burden. The findings of this study can potentially guide clinicians and public health professionals as they navigate providing care to PWLH. The authors point out that the findings should be interpreted with caution because the study is limited by substantial regional heterogeneity and low to very low certainty of evidence.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"An estimated 40.8 million people were living with HIV or AIDS \u00a0throughout the world at the end of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":593112,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[103,61,60],"class_list":["post-593111","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health","tag-health","tag-ie","tag-ireland"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/593111","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=593111"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/593111\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/593112"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=593111"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=593111"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=593111"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}