A discriminative study of health-related quality of life assessment in HIV-1-infected persons living in Japan using the Multidimensional Quality of Life Questionnaire for persons with HIV/AIDS.

The aim of this study is to evaluate the discriminative properties of the Multidimensional Quality of Life Questionnaire for HIV infection (MQoL-HIV) and to determine those factors contributing to the health-related quality of life (HRQoL) of HIV-1 infected persons living in Japan. The MQoL-HIV, the Nottingham Health Profile (NHP) as a generic instrument, and the Center for Epidemiologic Studies-Depression Scale (CES-D) as a psychological measure were administered in 375 patients as a multiple-centre study. The score distribution of the MQoL-HIV showed a unimodal distribution. The Cronbach's alpha coefficient scored more than 0.7 in seven out of 10 domains, but was low in both the physical functioning and sexual functioning domains. There was a strong correlation between the CES-D and MQoL-HIV index scores (R-0.73). Relatively high coefficient values were found between psychiatric and nervous symptoms and the index score (R=-0.60). In total, the MQoL-HIV may possess discriminative properties.